N4 Pharma Plc Share News (N4P)

(Sharecast News) - Specialist pharmaceutical company N4 Pharma announced success in its in-vitro testing of its 'Nuvec' drug delivery system on Tuesday, loaded with two small interfering RNA (siRNA) probes.

The AIM-traded firm released a strategic update on 14 September, highlighting its intention to focus its further development work on multiple loaded siRNA on Nuvec.

It said on Tuesday that it had now completed initial in-vitro testing of Nuvec loaded with two generic siRNA probes - green fluorescent protein (GFP) and euchromatic histone lysine methyltransferase 2 (EHMT-2) - at the same time.

The siRNA probes were loaded onto Nuvec in equal amounts, at a concentration previously shown to be active.

N4 said the testing demonstrated that both siRNA probes, when loaded onto Nuvec, were able to "significantly silence" their respective targets.

"Showing that Nuvec loaded with two generic siRNA probes still achieves significant silencing of their respective genes is validation for us to now begin the further work that we announced on 14 September, with EGFR and BCl-2 in a PC9 lung cancer model," said chief executive officer Nigel Theobald.

"Achieving the initial successful testing of Nuvec with the generic GFP and EHMT-2 siRNA will also allow us to commence commercial outreach discussions which will only be further strengthened by the results from the new work we are undertaking."

At 1244 BST, shares in N4 Pharma were up 4.05% at 2.08p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.