On Wednesday, April 17^th, Rachel Rath, Director of the BARDA Alliance for Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JLABS), moderated a panel discussion entitled, “Leading Innovation: How Vaccines Are Paving the Way for Needle-Free Drug Delivery.”
 
Speakers in the panel included:
 

• Megan Livingston, Vice President of Business Development, Jurata Thin Film Inc.
• Michael Egan, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Scientific Officer, CastleVax
• Gunilla B. Jacobson, Director of Translational Medicine in the Department of Radiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine

 
While other applications are resistant to changing the route of administration from parenteral to non-parenteral, vaccines are leading demand for needle-free delivery options such as micro-array patches and micro-needle patches (both molded microneedles and hollow microneedles).
 
The experts on the panel were all developing needle-free vaccines and/or delivery platforms. In the panel, they discussed why they are pursuing alternative administration routes, what the value of needle-free platforms is, and what would be needed to see their platforms adopted by non-vaccine applications.

Thin Film Technology

Jurata’s thin film technology stabilizes vaccines and biologics at ambient temperatures to create a film that is administered under the tongue and dissolves in 30 seconds. Its proprietary formulations remove all cold chain requirements and the need for lyophilization to stabilize pharmaceutics. Its thin films also have the ability to change the route of administration of vaccines from parenteral to intranasal, sublingual, or buccal.
 
Their technology could significantly reduce the costs and logistics of manufacturing, transporting, and delivering vaccines and biologics, improving equitable access to life-saving treatments.

Mucosal Vaccine Platform

Meanwhile, CastleVax, which is a partner of Jurata, is a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering a clinical-stage mucosal vaccine platform. Its platform for producing first-in-class mucosal vaccines uses Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) to enable rapid development of safe and highly immunogenic viral vectors that are easy to deliver.
 
According to Egan, the vast majority of vaccines for respiratory diseases are administered via systemic delivery, and therefore do not induce mucosal immunity. CastleVax’s mucosal vaccine platform aims to bring to market safe and more effective vaccines for all humans, everywhere.

3D Printed Microarray Patches

Dr. Jacobson, on the other hand, works on the development of CLIP 3D printed microarray patches (MAPs), a scalable manufacturing process that provides MAPs with novel latticed designs and microfluidic channels that are agnostic to the cargo.
 
Using this technology, she has applied MAPs for the intradermal delivery of vaccines and therapeutics, and for sampling of interstitial fluids and tissue. She is a co-founder of PinPrint, a start-up focused on providing MAPs as a scalable platform technology.
 
All three speakers emphasized that there is room in the ecosystem for a variety of delivery methods. Which approach is ideal depends on the pathogen. For example, a vaccine for measles might be optimally delivered differently than a vaccine for norovirus.
 
Furthermore, certain methods may appeal more to certain patient populations. Take for instance a mother who brings her child with a broken hand to the hospital. Lidocaine could be applied with a microneedle patch, which is less invasive than having to get a needle injection and more comfortable for the mother and the child.
 
These technologies could even have an impact beyond the pharmaceutical industry. They could be used to address acne or wrinkles, or for interstitial fluid sampling. In conclusion, these innovations are here to stay.