A drug-delivery compound with origins at Kansas University is being licensed to a company looking to develop an injectable formulation of zileuton, a drug used to treat asthma.

CyDex Inc., a Lenexa-based pharmaceuticals company that grew out of research at Kansas University’s Higuchi Biosciences Center, announced Tuesday that it had signed a deal with Critical Therapeutics Inc., which is working on the asthma formulation for phase II clinical trials.

Critical Therapeutics, based in Lexington, Mass., plans to use CyDex’s Captisol technology to improve the solubility of zileuton, so that it may be used in emergency rooms or other urgent-care settings to treat patients with acute asthma symptoms.