A new layer in pharmaceutical performance
Ibumix is developing new liquid drug delivery platforms designed to improve drug absorption, increase efficiency, and realise the full therapeutic potential of every dose.
A systematic inefficiency in medicine
Most oral medicines are not fully absorbed. For conventional small molecules the loss is often modest. For peptide and protein medicines — the fastest-growing class in pharmaceuticals, from GLP-1 therapies to insulin — the loss is severe: without specialised formulation, oral peptide bioavailability is routinely below 1%. Ninety-nine molecules lost for every one that works.
This is not a niche problem. It is one of the largest, most under-addressed inefficiencies in modern medicine. Independent analysts project the oral GLP-1 market alone to grow from around $9 billion in 2026 to roughly $130 billion by 2035 (Towards Healthcare, 2025) — and in June 2025, Eli Lilly paid $870 million to license Camurus’s lipid-based delivery platform, a direct market signal of what large pharma will pay for a genuine oral delivery breakthrough in this space (Camurus / FierceBiotech, 2025).
A formulation-first approach
Ibumix is developing advanced formulations and excipient systems designed to improve absorption and bioavailability — without changing the underlying molecule. Drug delivery remains one of the most under-optimised areas in pharmaceuticals, and formulation, not molecular redesign, is where Ibumix competes.
A platform, not a single product
The Ibumix platform is built on proprietary bioavailability enhancers and applies across multiple active pharmaceutical ingredients and therapeutic areas. Sodium ibuprofen was the platform’s validation vehicle — the lowest-risk, fastest route to market, and the proof point for the underlying technology. Oral peptide and protein bioavailability is now the platform’s lead growth opportunity, addressing a problem shared by GLP-1 medicines, insulin, and dozens of other peptide therapeutics currently limited to injection. The UK patent application covering this specific formulation was filed only last week — this is a genuinely new addition to the platform, not a repositioning of existing work.
This flexibility is a deliberate strength, not a side effect. A single-product company lives or dies with one asset, one indication, one competitor set. Ibumix validates its core technology once, then extends it, at comparatively low incremental cost, across a widening set of active pharmaceutical ingredients, therapeutic areas, and delivery problems — spreading investment risk across several opportunities rather than concentrating it in one. The NSAID-to-GLP-1 shift is the proof: the same underlying platform redirected toward a larger opportunity the moment the market showed where it was, without starting the science over. That is the kind of optionality investors typically only get by backing several separate companies.
The same system is flexible in physical format as well as in application. It can be encapsulated or taken as a ready-to-use liquid — approximately 85% water, without organic solvents — so the finished dosage form can follow whatever a partner’s product and patient population actually need, rather than being fixed to one delivery format. Its suspension properties are designed to hold delicate peptide molecules stable and evenly distributed rather than settling or degrading, with the potential to carry higher peptide concentrations than a simple solution allows.
A platform that has listened and evolved
Ibumix’s liquid-format focus has a personal origin. Co-founder John Hawkins, the R&D chemist behind the company’s foundational science, was diagnosed with throat cancer and experienced first-hand how difficult swallowing conventional tablets and capsules becomes during serious illness. That experience shaped the company’s earliest technical choice: medicines people could take as a liquid, not a pill — starting with NSAIDs, to deliver pain relief in a form that didn’t depend on being able to swallow easily. John passed away in 2024; the platform he helped conceive remains central to Ibumix’s work today.
Ibumix began with the NSAID class — ibuprofen and naproxen — because it offered the fastest, lowest-risk route to prove the underlying technology against well-established comparator products and clear regulatory precedent.
Since then, direct engagement with the wider drug-delivery community has sharpened where the platform is heading. At the 2026 DDF Europe Summit in Berlin, Professor David Brayden of University College Dublin — one of the field’s leading academics in oral peptide delivery — presented independent findings, in his own conference talk, that every approved or late-stage oral peptide programme worldwide relies on a medium-chain fatty acid permeation enhancer, and that new candidates need to outperform these established options specifically to compensate for their lack of GRAS status. Ibumix has no formal relationship with Professor Brayden and this is not an endorsement of Ibumix; it is cited here purely as third-party, publicly presented evidence that validates the market opportunity Ibumix is built around: a platform using GRAS-status materials, addressing exactly this category of problem.
It also confirmed where the biggest opportunity actually sits. The single largest unmet need in oral drug delivery is not NSAIDs — it is getting peptide and protein medicines, from GLP-1 therapies to insulin, into a tablet at all.
Ibumix has responded accordingly. The NSAID chassis remains the validated proof point for the platform; oral peptide and protein bioavailability is now its lead growth opportunity. The company tests its assumptions against the market and adjusts, rather than defending a single fixed story.
Grounded in established, GRAS-status materials
Ibumix’s bioavailability enhancers are built on materials with an established safety pedigree — including GRAS food status in the US and a history of use in food and pharmaceutical products — rather than novel, unproven excipients. This established pedigree lowers the novel-excipient safety burden relative to a genuinely novel synthetic enhancer, subject to confirming precedent at Ibumix’s proposed pharmaceutical route and level.
Structured scientific development
Future funding will support a focused R&D programme with UK academic institutions, generating the controlled laboratory data, independent validation, and proof-of-concept results needed to advance the bioavailability programme. This work has not yet started.
Ibumix is structured to be eligible for the UK’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), with HMRC Advance Assurance to be sought ahead of the round.
Defensible by design
Ibumix has built a multi-patent estate alongside its scientific development, covering the core formulation approach and its extensions across applications and use cases.
Ibumix has built and patented a liquid crystal system made from bioavailability enhancers, used as the system’s structural chassis rather than as an additive to a conventional formulation — and holds that this is the world’s first such system, a position the company will maintain until shown otherwise.
A critical stage of development
This phase will validate the core technology, generate performance data, and establish the foundation for licensing partnerships and scale.
Systematic opportunity
- A widespread inefficiency. Affects both established small-molecule medicines and the fastest-growing class of new therapeutics — peptides and proteins.
- A platform with genuine optionality. One validated core technology, extendable across multiple APIs, therapeutic areas, and delivery routes — already demonstrated in practice by the NSAID-to-GLP-1 shift, not just claimed in theory. Multiple shots on goal from a single R&D investment, rather than a single-asset bet.
- Clear pathway to scale. Ibumix licenses its platform to pharmaceutical partners; it does not manufacture or sell medicines directly.
Get in touch
For more information about Ibumix’s work, contact the team via ibumix.com.