SAN DIEGO, Sept. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Biora Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIOR), the biotech company that is reimagining therapeutics, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a patent related to the company's technologies for oral, systemic delivery of biologics, which uses an ingestible device designed to achieve systemic uptake through liquid jet delivery to the small intestine.

The USPTO has issued U.S. Patent No. 11,439,802 entitled, "Ingestible device for delivery of therapeutic agent to the gastrointestinal tract." The patent is directed to methods for using an ingestible device to treat a disease or condition in a patient using jet delivery of a glucagon receptor agonist (RA) or a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist formulation to the small intestine to achieve systemic uptake.

GLP-1 receptor agonists are a class of drug approved for type 2 diabetes and weight loss but are also being evaluated by other parties in other diseases including fatty liver disease and atrial fibrillation. According to leading analytics firm GlobalData, the GLP-1 receptor agonist market is forecasted to be well over $20 billion by 2025, with multiple billion-dollar drugs including Victoza, Trulicity, Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Mounjaro.

"This latest patent is important for us because it generally covers oral delivery of any GLP-1 RA using an ingestible device and jet delivery to the small intestine," said Adi Mohanty, Chief Executive Officer of Biora Therapeutics. "It strengthens the intellectual property position for our PGN-OB2 candidate, which consists of a GLP-1 receptor agonist delivered via liquid jet into the small intestinal tissue for the treatment of type 2 diabetes," continued Mr. Mohanty. "The only oral GLP-1 receptor agonist available today is about 1% bioavailable. We believe we can do significantly better than that, having already shown preclinical bioavailability averaging over 20% with proteins."

While patent 11,439,802 is directed to methods of jet delivery of GLP-1 receptor agonist formulations to the small intestine, Biora Therapeutics also holds device patents and applications directed to its OBDS ingestible device, including U.S. Patent No. 11,007,356 entitled, "Ingestible device for delivery of therapeutic agent to the gastrointestinal tract." Biora Therapeutics' robust patent portfolio consists of 82 patent families, including approximately 170 issued patents and more than 170 pending applications worldwide, following the transfer of its liquid biopsy-related intellectual property to Enumera Molecular. The portfolio includes patents and applications directed to devices (including gastrointestinal "GI" localization, targeted delivery to the GI tract, jet delivery into GI tissue, and GI sampling), therapeutic treatment via ingestible devices (including PK/PD profiles, dosing regimens, drug combinations, and liquid drug formulations) and sampling and diagnostics (including sample preservation, testing, diagnostic markers, and protein and nucleic acid markers and assays).