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• Pipeline Overview
• Nektar Proprietary Products
  • NKTR-102
    (PEG-irinotecan)
  • NKTR-118
    (oral PEG-naloxol)
  • NKTR-024
    (amphotericin B inhalation powder)
• Nektar Partnered Products
• Drug Development Platforms

We are developing an inhaled amphotericin B product for preventing fatal pulmonary fungal infections, like aspergillosis, in immunosuppressed patients. Because the mortality rate in these patients is at least 50%, even when treated, and the cost to treat the disease is extraordinarily high, it is believed that prevention may be more effective than treatment.

Amphotericin B is a potent broad spectrum anti-fungal drug which has been used intravenously for decades. We have developed a powder formulation of amphotericin B that is designed to:

• Enable the inhalation of amphotericin B directly to the lungs
• Prevent potential life-threatening lung fungal infections
• Limit systemic exposure and thereby prevent the common therapy-limiting toxicities associated with intravenous amphotericin therapy
• Provide a delivery mode that will encourage compliance—a small, hand-held inhaler that will enable dosing in a single inhalation

Treatment of these severe fungal infections is difficult because definitive diagnosis takes a long time, therapies are only partially effective, and serious side effects and interactions with other drugs limit the utility of the approved drugs (itraconazole, voriconazole, caspofungin). Amphotericin B has long been the drug of choice; however, currently it is available only as an intravenous medication that has serious dose-limiting toxicity to the liver but primarily the kidneys. By overcoming these limitations, NKTR-024 has the potential to keep patients from needlessly experiencing pulmonary fungal infections and their high mortality rate.