REHOVOT, Israel - D-Pharm Ltd. has acquired the proprietary drug-targeting technologies of Polar Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Portland,Ore., comprising a package of five issued U.S. patents and several international patent applications.

“Polar has produced polar lipid drug conjugates that are based on technology developed at the Oregon Health Sciences University,“ said Milton Yatvin, Polar's CEO, who will serve as a consultant to D-Pharm.

The Polar technology complements D-Pharm's existing drug-targeting technologies, such as Regulated Activation of Prodrugs (RAP), and increases the company's capacity to provide custom solutions for a wide range of drugs and diseases. “This acquisition provides an excellent strategic fit with our in-house expertise,“ said Alex Kozak, president and CEO of D-Pharm.

The Polar technology involves chemically linking the drug molecule with certain lipids that act as natural “tags“ for routing therapeutic molecules to target tissues or organs. By attaching a range of such tags to a drug compound, it is possible to create a variety of chemical entities, each targeted preferentially to different organs or tissues. D-Pharm intends to use the tagging technology to generate a pipeline of new products for treatment of various disorders, including central nervous system diseases.

D-Pharm is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel targeted neuro-protective and anti-epileptic drugs using its Selective Molecular Activation and Routing technologies (SMARt), which capitalize on the body's own stress-response mechanisms in order to selectively activate and/or route pharmacological agents to their therapeutic targets. - Rachelle H.B. Fishman