The first step was a find way to cut what
Skvarka refers to as the “cash burn,” and shore up the financial interests of the company — including laying off approximately 40 per cent of the company’s staff. Second was to focus the firm’s R&D strategy, including shutting down a clinical development program run by Trillium, making substantial changes to the executive team and creating a new scientific advisory board.
Based in Vancouver, B.C., Acuitas Therapeutics focuses on lipid nanotechnology and how these organic molecules can be used in medical interventions.surround the mRNA that encodes COVID spike proteins, protecting it and ensuring it is transported into the cell. Once in the cell, the the cell uses the mRNA to help the immune system recognize the virus cells that cause COVID-19.
“It needs to be in this carrier so that the carrier can deliver it inside cells,” Thomas Madden, PhD, Acuitas Therapeutics President and CEOin 2020. “The lipid nanoparticles technology that Acuitas provides is a critical component, the vaccine simply can’t work without that delivery technology.” Acuitas is a privately held company and keeps their financials close to the chest. However, in a previous profile, Madden alludes annual revenue for the company is “more than tens of millions of dollars” annually and was expected to grow by about 75 per cent from 2020 to 2022. Several other firms also use Acuitas’s delivery system in vaccine development.