Next Generation Nebulizer Could Replace Jabs Researchers have developed a nebulizer that could one day deliver life-saving cancer drugs and vaccines traditionally given by injection. Cheap, light-weight and portable, the advanced nebulizer delivers precise drug doses to patients with life-threatening or debilitating lung conditions including cancer, tuberculosis, asthma and cystic fibrosis. 

But the RespiteTM nebulizer also has the potential to be used to administer insulin to people with diabetes or to painlessly vaccinate infants currently subjected to needles. Professor Leslie Yeo, Director of RMIT University MicroNanophysics Research Laboratory, said the Respite technology had the potential to revolutionize how patients were treated with drugs, including people with lung cancer whose poor survival rates have stayed stable despite significant therapeutic advances in recent years. 

�Anything we can nebulize, we can potentially deliver,� Yeo said. Yeo commented that conventional puffers only manage to get 30 percent of the drugs into the lungs, the rest of the drug gets lost in the mouth. This is a problem when the drug delivered is expensive due to the wastage. In addition, traditional inhalers also require band-breath coordination to administration, which would require the elderly and very young patients to be taught to avoid misuse. 

�The most important aspect of our device is that it does not require inhalation to generate the aerosols as with the ubiquitous inhalers, which can be a problem for people already suffering compromised lung function,� said Yeo. Unlike one-size-fits-all inhalers, RespiteTM allows allows the dose to be adjusted based on a patient's size, age, gender, physiological profile and disease severity. 

The design of RespiteTM does not require meshes or nozzles unlike other nebulizers, so there is no clogging or fouling problems that diminish performance. The Respite technology uses sound waves to excite the surface of the fluid or drug. This generates a fine mist capable of delivering much larger molecules directly to the lungs. Rigorous lab tests have proved the device capable of delivering next generation drugs such as proteins, peptides and DNA to the lungs without a patient having to inhale. The device delivers drugs at rates of up to 3 ml/min, compared to the much smaller doses of 0.4 ml/min benchmark of current nebulizers. 

Recent trials in Melbourne also showed sheep given a DNA flu vaccine via a nebulizer had comparable immune responses to animals injected with the vaccine. Yeo believes that RespiteTM has a huge potential to deliver drugs for lung cancer patients. �The five-year survival rate for lung cancer remains around 15 percent despite the significant therapeutic advances achieved in recent years and currently, there are no personalized delivery devices for inhaled cancer drugs to improve these clinical outcomes,� he said. 

�Our nebulizer addresses this gap as a low-cost and convenient yet efficient method of delivering oncolytics directly to the lungs, potentially revolutionizing the treatment of lung cancer.� The nebulizer can also be used for a range of non-pharmaceutical applications such as perfumes, cosmetics and sterilization of equipment and surfaces.