Unilife Signs Drug Delivery Contract

Unilife Corp. has signed a customization and commercial supply agreement with a U.S. pharmaceutical company for the EZMix dual-chamber syringe. Unilife will supply a customized device from its EZMix platform of delivery systems for use with a lyophilized drug that requires mixing at the time of injection. The drug, which is a proprietary version of an approved therapy, is entering late-stage development.
 
Unilife anticipates as much as $110 million in revenue during the 15-year agreement, based on a customization and production scale-up program, commercial device sales and a royalty on sales. Unilife will receive approximately $3 million during a 12- to 24-month period for the supply of prefilled EZMix devices for clinical trials and compatibility testing, and an additional $3 million to fund the production scale-up to manufacture commercial volumes.
 
Alan Shortall, chief executive officer of Unilife, said, “As the world’s only dual-chamber syringe with intuitive, ventless, orientation-free mixing and automatic needle retraction, EZMix is a game-changing technology for the delivery of liquid-liquid or liquid-dry drug combination therapies. Compared to conventional technologies which can take between five and a dozen complex steps to mix together the drug and diluent combination, EZMix can essentially achieve the same outcome with one easy, single-handed action. That makes EZMix an enabling technology for combination therapies targeted for use by healthcare workers or self-injecting patients.”