May 7, 2007 — The U.K.-based Midatech Group Ltd., a company devoted to production and application of nanoparticles for therapeutic and diagnostic applications, has opened its specialist design and manufacturing facility for cGMP (current good manufacturing practice)-grade nanoparticles in Bilbao, Spain. The company says Midatech Biogune S.L. is the world’s first cGMP-grade plant for the production of nanoparticles at a scale commensurate with pharmaceutical applications.

The plant will initially focus on the design and manufacture of nanoparticles to supply Midatech Group’s series of projects applying nanotechnology for therapeutic purposes. These include using nanoparticles as scaffolds for synthetic vaccines and antibiotics, as drug delivery vehicles for RNAi drugs and drugs able to cross the blood-brain barrier, as well as targeted cancer treatments and imaging agents. Midatech says its nanoparticles will allow drug companies to deliver new and existing medicines at significantly lower doses and with greater specificity, thereby reducing toxicity.

In addition to in-house product development, Midatech is prepared to license this IP to pharmaceutical and diagnostic development partners while retaining manufacturing rights. The company has exclusive world-wide rights for technology relating to the synthesis and applications of self-assembling nanoparticles.

Midatech says its biocompatible nanoparticles possess a number of unique properties that make them ideal for therapeutics, diagnostics and other enabling applications, including water solubility, and ability to present multiple ligands (allowing for multivalent drug or multi-drug delivery on a single particle).