Hera Health Solutions

Market position

The company positions itself as a long-acting drug delivery specialist serving global pharmaceutical partners, addressing limitations of oral dosing and existing long-acting injectables and implants such as limited duration, unpredictable release, high cost and complex removal procedures. It has been featured in a national FirstWorld 'Injectables and Implantables' report and in Entrepreneur magazine, and competed at the Entrepreneurship World Cup in Saudi Arabia.

Differentiators cited by the company include customizable and precisely tuned release kinetics without burst release, fully biodegradable systems that do not require surgical removal, use of FDA-approved materials and GMP-approved processes intended to streamline regulatory review, mitigation of toxicity associated with traditional delivery methods, and cost-efficient electrospinning-based manufacturing at scale.

Technology

The core technology is a nanotechnology-enabled, bioerodible drug delivery platform built on biodegradable electrospun nanofiber scaffolds. Parametric manufacturing controls allow tunable release profiles with sustained release ranging from days up to 48 months, adjustable degradation rates, and elimination of burst release in favor of a constant effective dose. The company states it uses FDA- and GMP-approved manufacturing processes and FDA-approved scaffolding materials, and that electrospinning-based production lowers manufacturing costs at scale. The platform is described as compatible with small molecules and large biologics and capable of incorporating multiple APIs in one system.

Go-to-market

The company pursues collaboration-led commercialization, partnering with pharmaceutical companies to apply its platform to their APIs, signing contract and licensing agreements (including regional licensing for Asia), and using grant funding and accelerator/competition visibility to support development.

Global pharmaceutical companies seeking to reformulate existing therapeutics, plus governmental agencies; end patients include users of long-acting contraception and other chronic therapies.

Geography

Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, with partnership and licensing activity extending internationally, including an Asia licensing agreement with Geovista, investors from Ireland, and prior presentations in Spain, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

History

The company announced a $1.25 million Series Seed round in November 2019 and by that point had been recognized internationally, including selection among the 'Top 10 Healthcare Startups' by the South Summit Fund in Madrid and an invitation from the UN to present at the Citypreneur Innovation conference in Seoul. It won a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant and announced an NSF grant to expand its technology in May 2023. More recently it announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Geovista to expand its platform drug delivery technology into Asia, a global pharmaceutical contract, and a 2025 contract partnership covered by a business journal.