Liquidia Technologies, Inc., a late-stage biopharmaceutical company, received a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its patent application No. 16/099,135, bringing the company one step closer in the patent process.

The USPTO issues of a notice of allowance to an applicant when the patent examiner determines that the application is complete and meets the requirements for the patent to be issued. The patent is expected to be issued in the fourth quarter and should go through 2037, Liquidia said in a press release dated Aug. 28.

Liquidia’s patent application is related to its LIQ861 product, a dry powder treprostinil currently under review with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

“We were very excited about the patent from the beginning. We saw a huge need for PAH patients, which is an incurable disease with a painful progression,” Liquidia CEO Neal Fowler told the North Carolina Business News Wire in an interview.

He continued: “Patients start with oral medication, as the disease progresses, they move to inhaled doses, and eventually to injections, which produces a poor quality of life. We saw a huge need in the inhaled doses space because patients currently have to use nebulizers.”

Product 861, or LIQ861, is a dry powder inhaler that uses the same active ingredient as a currently marketed product, treprostinil. Because the FDA already approves that drug and Liquidia did not have to reprove its efficacy with more clinical trials, the company could instead focus on safety, Fowler explained.

Founded in 2004, Liquidia manufactures engineered particles using PRINT (Particle Replication in Non-Wetting Templates), a particle engineering and manufacturing technology. According to Fowler, PRINT has been critical to the development of LIQ861.

“It [PRINT] engineers particles to be exactly the same size and shape, then you take the active drug, which is what the particle is made out of, and it uniformly deposits throughout the lungs. Clinical data has shown what great things come of that: we’re able to safely dose higher than a nebulizer can, so patients can stay on inhalers longer before moving to injectables,” Fowler said.

Liquidia’s stock (LQDA) was trading a penny lower near $4.37 on Friday.