October 22, 2007 — Cientifica, a London-based nanotech research firm, says nanotech-enabled improvements to existing pharmaceuticals have created a “new value paradigm” in the drug delivery market.

In a white paper, “The Nanotech Revolution in Drug Delivery,” lead author Hailing Yu wrote that “several hundred billion dollars worth” of pharmaceutical compounds are sitting in “IP vaults unused” because technology has not yet been developed to deliver the compounds directly to where they are needed in the body.

“The industry is keen to unlock and exploit this valuable intellectual property, and using nanotechnology to create new chemical entities via reformulation gives them the key,” wrote Yu, research director for Cientifica.

The impact on the dental surgical market is already significant, with Cientifica estimating that nano-enabled dental drugs already represent a $3.39 billion market and prompting a scramble by both large pharmaceutical companies and drug delivery start ups to grab a piece of a market predicted to grow to $26 billion by 2012.

“After that, the market is poised to explode,” said Cientifica CEO Tim Harper, “with the fruits of today’s research and development in both drug delivery systems and nanomaterials feeding through to create a market worth $220 billion by 2015.”

The White Paper is a companion to Cientifica’s recently released report “The Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Market,” which identifies and analyses the companies and players that are likely to benefit as nanotechnology reshapes the drug delivery market.