Controlled Heat-Assisted Drug Delivery (CHADD®)

Our CHADD® unit generates heat when exposed to air. The CHADD® unit contains a heat- generating powder that consists of a proprietary mixture of several non-toxic ingredients which produce heat when exposed to air. After an initial rise in temperature, the mild heat generated by the CHADD® unit will reach and maintain a controlled temperature range for a pre-determined period of time. The CHADD® unit may either be incorporated directly into the drug-containing patch as with Synera® or ThermoProfen™, or placed on top of a transdermal drug patch to initiate temporary increased in drug concentrations. CHADD® units can be customized to achieve the specific temperature and duration of heating required for therapy. Depending on the intended application, a CHADD® unit can be designed to deliver heat for period from 20 minutes to 12 hours.

We have developed our Synera® product and ThermoProfen™ product candidate using our proprietary CHADD® technology.

We believe our CHADD® technology can have a variety of clinically important advantages over traditional patch technologies, including:

  • More Effective Delivery: Frequently, oral drugs are unable to deliver high concentrations of drug to the desired target site due to poor absorption qualities, first pass metabolism, and adverse side effects. Traditional patches may be unable to deliver effective doses of the drug, or their use may be associated with unacceptable adverse side effects. We believe the controlled heat generated by the CHADD® unit may be able to deliver higher levels of drugs with fewer systemic adverse side effects associated with oral delivery.
  • Faster Onset of Action: The CHADD® technology may be used with transdermal drug delivery systems to reduce onset time by increasing body fluid circulation and the release rate of the drug into the body. This may be particularly useful for transdermally delivered drugs that have longer than desirable onset times. Stand-alone CHADD® units can be placed over an existing drug patch to rapidly increase the blood levels of the drug from the patch. We have conducted several clinical studies evaluating the impact of heat on the transdermal delivery of certain transdermal patches. Results from those studies indicate that heat can produce increases in the rate of drug delivered and the total amount of drug delivered from these patches.
  • Reduced Side Effects: Many transdermal drug delivery systems rely on the use of skin permeation enhancers that irritate, damage or otherwise compromise the skin. Our proprietary CHADD® technology uses controlled heat to enhance permeation in a way that may be less irritating to the skin than chemical permeation enhancers. Additionally, the enhanced permeation provided by the CHADD® technology may allow the use of drugs in patch formats that otherwise may not be therapeutically effective in a traditional patch due to either slow drug absorption or the need for excessive permeation enhancers.
  • Complementary Therapeutic Combination of Drug and Heat: Topically applied heat has been shown to provide a therapeutic benefit for the treatment of some painful conditions. We believe our combination of heat and drug will be more effective than either drug or heat alone. We believe that when topical heat is combined with the local delivery of some pain drugs, an additional complementary therapeutic benefit may occur compared to patch products that do not use heat and drug together.