Starting from drugs that have to be injected today, Biolingus is working on products that can be taken sublingually in the future. The Swiss-based company has filed for an IPO with the objective of raising close to USD50 million.
Since its inception in 2014, Biolingus has focused on developing sublingual delivery. The sublingual area lies under the tongue and is lined by a thin layer of cells which has a rich supply of blood vessels. Sublingual delivery has been successfully used commercially for many years to deliver a variety of so-called small molecule drugs. Biolingus’ goal is to similarly exploit the unique nature of the sublingual area to effectively deliver peptides and proteins. The main peptide used to improve the technology was exenatide, which was the first commercial glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) receptor protein product and is routinely used to treat type 2 diabetes.