New Generation of Nebulisers for Efficient Respiratory Drug Delivery

Acu-Flow will develop a new, unique innovative functionality for its new nebuliser platform to enable inhalation delivery of liquid formulations for the precision delivery of medicines to the lungs. According to the World Health Organisation, respiratory diseases are known as the leading causes of death and disability in the world, with an estimated clinical cost of €400bn/year. In the UK, the British Lung Foundation estimates that 10,000 people are diagnosed with a lung disorder every week with a £9.9bn direct cost for NHS and £1.2bn cost to the wider economy. Generally, patients with such respiratory diseases are treated by the inhalation of aerosols, where the effective delivery of medication is crucially dependent upon the droplet size distribution. Larger drops are caught in the upper respiratory tract, while smaller ones are exhaled before they can be adsorbed - neither reach the patient.

Nebulisers are also becoming important in enabling new drugs for COVID-19 treatment, reshaping the market. For example, 29 (of 48) drugs in development for COVID-19 are delivered by inhalation, including the recently successful drug by Synairgen.

Despite advances in the current state-of-the-art nebuliser technology (including both jet and mesh systems), there are still two key technical constraints that limit the benefits to patients, namely (i) a limited range of acceptable formulation properties; and (ii) relatively inefficient delivery. These limitations result in patients needing specific nebulisers for each drug, with many individuals with chronic diseases requiring different ones. The low efficiency can lead to long delivery times (e.g. people with cystic fibrosis (CF) can spend 20min nebulising and 20min cleaning the devices, six times per day), leading to challenges in adherence to treatment. These limitations also restrict the adoption of new drugs and vaccines, which have promising potential in treating difficult diseases.

Working with the University of Glasgow, Acu-Flow will develop essential technologies required to demonstrate its new nebuliser platform. This platform uses a unique method, based on the interactions between acoustics, microstructured arrays and liquids, to control droplet size in the aerosols generated, within the clinically effective range, with a proven ability to enable further precision of delivery.

The platform has already demonstrated its capability to nebulise a wide range of therapeutics including existing drugs and emerging "high-value" biologics and nanomedicines, which will be critically important in new treatments e.g. for lung hypertension, CF and tuberculosis, but are not able to reach the market due to the limitations of existing nebulisation platforms.

The new system will be a low-cost, portable device with increased efficiency of drug delivery. This new technology promises broad societal, economic and health impacts for patients, clinicians and the UK economy.

Although our near-term focus is in drug delivery, we envisage that the technology will provide a generic platform for "smart" droplet generation, with wider potential applications in other important large markets including cosmetics, food formulation and spray-coating.