University start-up to commercialize milk nanoparticles for precision therapeutics

Two researchers have launched a start-up, Minovacca, aiming to commercialize the use of universal milk exomes — natural nanoparticles contained in milk — to deliver therapeutics, gene editing tools and plasmids to targeted locations in the body. 

For their company, Janos Zempleni and Jiantao Guo from the US University of Nebraska-Lincoln draw on bioorthogonal chemistry techniques to achieve target-specific delivery by chemically and genetically engineering the exosomes. 

The university’s nonprofit commercialization affiliate, NUtech Ventures, has filed a patent for the technology. According to the researchers, it could be used to treat common and rare diseases, which often struggle to secure funding due to a small patient base.

“Because our technology is so versatile, we are not limited to one rare disease. We can actually use this same technology to tailor to many rare diseases,” says Zempleni, Willa Cather professor of nutrition and health sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

“Rare disease groups are so thankful that there is maybe a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Zempleni initially demonstrated the safety and scalability of the milk exosomes and developed protocols to make programmable milk exosomes. Next, Guo, a professor of chemistry, helped create a strategy to direct exosomes to particular cells, depending on the disease. 

Programmable milk exomes

Minovacca’s technology offers a significant advance over existing approaches for targeted delivery due to its “unprecedented level of potency and specificity.” It also overcomes a major flaw in drug delivery approaches, where the product reaches cells beyond targeted locations, which creates adverse effects. 

For example, patients on chemotherapy often face hair loss, gastrointestinal upset and a compromised immune function. “Chemotherapy treatments kill not only cancer cells; they kill any cell proliferating fast,” says Zempleni. “And that’s something we want to minimize with our technology.” 

The researchers attach three peptides (short amino acid chains) to the membrane of each exosome. A homing peptide directs the exosome to bind to a specific site in the body. Another sends biochemical signals allowing the exosome to stop the destruction of macrophages — white food cells of the innate immune system. The third peptide is a retrofusion peptide, which fortifies the exosome’s survivability once it enters a target cell. 

The researchers chemically and genetically engineer the milk exosomes to ensure target-specific delivery.Traditionally, these peptides are anchored to the membrane through lipid anchors, but these detach when they are attracted to other fat-loving compounds in the body. Instead, Zempleni and Guo created “docking sites” in a membrane protein anchored to the exosome. 

Through bioorthogonal chemistry approaches, Guo created stable, covalent links between these docking sites and the peptides, providing stability and uniformity to the exosome structure and boosting the commercial viability of milk exosome-based therapeutics. 

“Ensuring this homogeneous structure will allow the FDA to see that the exosomes can be produced consistently from batch to batch,” explains Guo. 

Minovacca launch

The start-up is the result of years of research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to prove the viability and safety of milk exosomes and develop the technology. It aims to license the technology through NUtech Ventures. It has acquired office space and will offer job opportunities for students in the pharmaceutical space. 

Minovacca aims to submit an Investigational New Drug Application to the US FDA — a formal request to administer an investigational drug or bioproduct to humans. 

The company’s name aims to reflect its use of milk to help humans. It is inspired by the human-bull hybrid Minotaur from Greek mythology, but changing taur to vacca — the Latin word for cow. 

Precision therapeutics

The nutrition and pharmaceutical industries are examining targeted delivery, precision diagnostics and therapeutics to improve the efficacy of solutions. For example, Nutrition Insight sat down with Bayer Consumer Health to discuss how it uses AI to optimize precision health. 

In addition, the precision medicine company Nimble Science offers companies access to new gastrointestinal health data and recently introduced a data platform to transform diagnostics across various healthcare fields. The company links this platform with its ingestible capsule device that collects samples from the small intestine. 

In nutrition, companies develop solutions to deliver nutrients to the intestine to improve absorption. For example, Sirio Pharma developed soft gels with a patented Plantegrity shell that only dissolves in the intestines instead of the stomach. Last year, dsm-firmenich launched a microbiome-targeted vitamin B2 solution to release around 90% of the vitamin in the lower intestine and colon.