Next-Generation Spray Delivery of Vaccines and Other Therapeutics with High Viscosity Aerosol

Abstract

PARC is developing a next-generation technology for spray delivery of fluids with high viscosity. While conventional methods for spraying (Spray 1.0) such as pump sprays are largely viscosity-limited and only work for fluids with consistency close to water, the PARC technology called FEA, short for Filament Extension Atomizer (Spray 2.0) can generate narrowly-dispersed micron-sized droplets from fluids with a wide range of viscosities, from water-like (1 mPa-s) to peanut butter-like (>600 Pa-s). The next-generation high viscosity aerosol that FEA can produce can have many implications in the life sciences. While therapeutic formulation for spray delivery normally requires significant reduction of (bio)-macromolecular content to permit spraying, fluids with nearly any level of (bio)-macromolecular content and viscosity can be sprayed using FEA. Biomacromolecules of interest as drugs and therapeutics such as large polypeptides, nucleic acids, monoclonal antibodies, etc. can now be spray delivered into droplets with narrow size dispersion, ideal for nasal, oral or topical delivery. In the context of vaccine and therapeutic delivery, we are currently exploring various applications of our technology both for wide-area spray delivery (e.g. in wildlife against emerging infectious diseases) or for precision targeted delivery (e.g. for humans in a clinical setting), for vaccines (virus vectors, virus-like particles) and other therapeutics (broad-scale immune boosting).