Napo Pharmaceuticals

R&D pipeline

Pre-clinical screening

Napo has a library of approximately 2,300 medicinal plants, all of which are available to be screened to discover new chemical entities and new pharmaceutical products. This screening is the basic technique from which crofelemer and NP-500 were discovered.

The company believes that screening partnerships are a cost-effective method to capitalize on the opportunity for discovery of novel chemistry and biology/mechanisms of action. Napo can leverage the significant equipment and intellectual expertise of partners because approximately 50% of new chemical entities are either natural products or derived from natural products

AsiaPharm has agreed to collaborate on the investigation of a portion of the medicinal natural product library owned by Napo for future product candidates. The plant library selection was generated by determining which plants, and specifically, which extracts from those plants, are used by native healers to treat the diseases of interest. This library provides:

• Diversity of chemical class
• Diversity in methods to treat disease
• Attractive safety profile of plants/extracts since extracts from these plants have been ingested by humans for generations, with the consequent expectation that the extracts will have a more favorable safety profile than a chemically synthesized molecule designed in a laboratory
• Expectation of a higher likelihood of being orally active since most of the plant extracts have previously been administered orally for the treatment of diseases