BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Inhale acquires a small molecule platform

January 2, 2001 8:00 AM UTC

Late last year, Inhale Therapeutic Systems Inc. lost out to Elan Corp. plc as the two vied to acquire Quadrant Health plc for its pulmonary delivery technology. INHL has come back with a new acquisition, of Bradford Particle Design plc, which it says is strategic, while its erstwhile efforts to buy Quadrant were opportunistic.

Bradford (Bradford, U.K.) develops supercritical fluid processing technology, which can be used to manufacture powdered small molecules and proteins. A supercritical fluid (SCF) is simultaneously a fluid at or above the pressure where the gas becomes a liquid and above the temperature where the liquid becomes a gas. SCFs have low viscosity and low surface tension, and because of these desirable properties they have been used for many years as solvents for chemical extraction, including for extracting caffeine from coffee. Carbon dioxide is the most extensively used SCF due to its cheapness, non-toxicity, non-flammability and low critical temperature...