Japan’s leading diversified materials manufacturer, Nitto Denko Corporation, today announced that a
basic patent regarding the company’s epoch-making antifibrotic therapy has been successfully
registered in the USA. Nitto Denko has been developing antifibrotic drugs in collaboration with
Professor Yoshiro Niitsu at Sapporo Medical University since 2008, and has already been granted this
patent in Japan, China and Australia.
This patent covers various DDS (Drug Delivery Systems) that includes antifibrotic drugs, coupled with
targeting agents for the cells that are responsible for disease. This patent should lead to the
world’s first complete cure of organ fibrosis, which is expected to give a significant boost to the
value of Nitto Denko’s patent portfolio.
Recently Nitto Denko has developed new drug and drug delivery materials which satisfy both efficacy
and safety perspectives. Nitto Denko plans practical applications firstly for a liver cirrhosis drug,
by applying an IND (Investigational New Drug) to the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) by the end
of 2012, followed by the initiation of clinical trial studies in 2013.
Hereafter, Nitto Denko aims to expand efforts and achieve significant progress in order to develop new
drugs for inveterate diseases including fibrosis.
Molecular targeting DDS is for delivering therapeutic agents directly and specifically to the cells
that cause diseases. In the future it is anticipated that highly efficacious treatments with less
side-effects for the diseases would be available that is still difficult to treat now. The
antifibrotic therapy Nitto Denko is currently developing was discovered by Prof. Yoshiro Niitsu and
his group in Sapporo Medical University, then combined with Nitto Denko’s new DDS technologies. Nitto
Denko expects that this treatment can be applied to various organ fibrosis including liver cirrhosis
and other intractable diseases.
