Sindolor hopes to take the pain of injections away.After homework, the second most despised activity in a child’s life is probably going for injections at the doctor’s office. Important for immunization, or to guard against tetanus or anaphylactic shock – few people in the world enjoy getting injections – or worse, having to administer them to manage chronic diseases, such as diabetes, on a daily basis.
Making the pain of injections go away in children, adults and seniors, is Israel’s Sindolor. Based in Ramat Gan, under the TASE-traded mother company D Medical Industries, Sindolor is about to release its EZject drug delivery platform.
Now negotiating with one of the top 10 multi-national pharmaceutical companies in the world, Sindolor expects EZject to be available in the United States by next year.
For business development reasons – until the contract is signed – Sindolor’s CEO David Neuberg, an industrial engineer, won’t mention the partner company’s name or target drug. Neuberg did tell ISRAEL21c, however, that the pharma company plans on giving away the EZject device to customers, who use its medicine, free of charge.
Beyond that, Sindolor expects to license its drug delivery platform to a wide range of partners, each looking for an advantage in the very competitive pharmaceutical business.
The device, about the size of a traditional needle, delivers a subcutaneous injection using the company’s safety syringe. Approved for marketing in the US, Sindolor’s big trick to eradicating the needle’s sting without anaesthesia is by cooling the area around the skin before the needle is inserted.
The company has already developed a product called the Auto Injector, a syringe that can be used at home to reduce the pain of routine injections, and to control the dosage of medication.
Under D Medical Industries, Sindolor has raised $1 million in financing, and has absorbed all the R&D costs in bringing the EZject to market. The company, founded last year, has two sister companies in the diabetes market, Nilimedics and J-Sense. Sindolor plans to strike licensing deals for various kinds of active ingredients requiring injection.
Neuman tells ISRAEL21c: “I just came back yesterday from Europe where I was presenting our injection device to one of the biggest pharma companies in the world. It’s a device that we developed together,” he says. For bearing the cost of R&D, Sindolor is going to earn a price per unit, once the commercialization agreement is signed.
At the end of the day, it’s really the consumer’s peace of mind at stake, especially for those who can’t live without daily injections, or for those who have a hard time inserting the needle into the skin: “EZject is excellent for children,” says Neuman, “It’s not involving pain and the child cannot see the needle,” – especially important for those with needle phobia, he reasons.
Israeli media reports that the deal could be worth millions — not shabby for Sindolor’s grand entry into the field of painless and alternative injection technology, an area which Israel has become a specialist in recently.
Other Israeli companies in the market include Modogene, a company that has developed a technology that extends the life of the injection’s active ingredient, reducing the number of injections needed; Transpharma which has developed a patch against osteoporosis; and Nanocyte, which uses bio-mimicry based on jellyfish stingers, to deliver painless injections.