About

Nanoscale Solutions for Life’s Biggest Problems
Applications in Cancer, Molecular Medicine and Industrial Processing

Keystone Nano (KN) is a developing several novel nanotechnologies to provide solutions for some of life’s biggest problems – for the improved treatment of cancer and for improvements in difficult to solve industrial chemistries.  The nanoparticles developed by KN can more effectively and precisely deliver chemicals to sites of interest. KN has worked with a wide range of active ingredients and can manufacture the surfaces of the nanoparticles with either passive and active targeting strategies. KN has two major technology areas – NanoJackets, comprised principally of Calcium phosphosilicates; and Nanoliposomes, which can carry Ceramide and other compounds of interest.

PRODUCTS IN DEVELOPMENT

Keystone has several nanoproducts in development which are described in the table.


KN PRODUCT SUMMARY
PRODUCT     APPLICATION     STATUS

Ceramide Nanoliposome     Liver Cancer, Leukemia, Breast Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer     Investigational New Drug Application under development; Clinical trials planned in 2011.

NJ siRNA     Breast Cancer, Melanoma, Central Nervous System Diseases     Product optimization underway designed to enable preclinical safety testing

NJ Indocyanine Green     Breast Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer     Product optimization underway; extensive cellular and animal testing has been completed showing striking efficacy

NJ Agricultural Compounds     Agricultural pesticides, insecticides or fungicides     Product development under way with industrial agricultural partner

NJ Industrial Compounds     Products associated with industrial water, paper and oil applications of the technology.     Product development and testing underway with our industrial partner.
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KN PARTNERS
KN is working with a wide range of partners to develop the technology and to create marketable products, some of which are described below.

Partner     Basis / Opportunity

Top 5 Pharmaceutical Company     Development of  NJ siRNA for in vivo testing
Leading Agricultural Chemicals Company     Development of NJ agricultural products for biological testing

Leading Industrial Chemicals Company (Nalco)     Development of NJ industrial products

Top 10 Pharmaceutical Company     Testing KN technology in vitro and in vivo

Top 20 Biotechnology Company     Working with to develop a related technology, refining the product formulation, scaling up the material and conducting Maximum Tolerated Dose and Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion data along with other preclinical testing.

NIH National Cancer Institute (SBIRs)     Financial support to develop technology for medical applications



Medical Applications
KN’s NanoJackets can deliver highly toxic chemotherapeutics (Doxorbuicin; Docetaxel, etc.) selectively to tumors, increasing the concentration of the drug at tumor sites and thereby enhancing the efficacy of the therapy and reducing the side effects. KN is also testing NanoJackets that deliver small interfering RNAs (siRNA) to stop the progression of a wide range of diseases.  NanoJackets can also selectively deliver fluorescent compounds such as Near Infrared emitters (ICG) to tumors where they can be excited with a NIR laser to destroy tumor cells selectively and promote an anti-tumor immune response.

KN is also developing Ceramide nanoliposomes that have demonstrated ability to treat a wide range of cancers in in-vivo models of liver cancer, breast cancer, and leukemia. Ceramide nanoliposomes have excellent safety profiles, and are robustly stable and suitable for large scale manufacturing.

Industrial applications
KN products can protect active ingredients during industrial processing and selectively deliver them to achieve the desired industrial effect. KN is working with both a leading industrial chemicals company, and a large scale agricultural chemicals company to develop novel nano-enhanced products.

KN’s technology was licensed from Penn State University and the Penn State University Hershey Medical Center.  Keystone Nano (KN) has considerable intellectual property, development expertise, and a research team that is further developing nanotechnologies and related novel medical therapies. Key accomplishments of Keystone include:

     Successfully transferred the technology from Penn State into KN laboratories in State College and Hershey;
     Successfully secured grants and contracts to develop the technology from leading pharmaceutical companies as well as local and national granting agencies;
     Scaled up the concentration and volume of nano-colloids by factors of 10,000