GENE THERAPY is full of promise, but unless you physically get the therapy to the target in the body, it won’t deliver. That’s why a research group in Galway is looking to a new nebuliser approach to help get gene therapies into the lungs intact.
It’s one of over 20 medical technologies showcased at a conference in Dublin this week. According the Irish Medical and Surgical Trade Association, the event’s organisers, the medical technology industry in Ireland employs 30,000 people and exports in 2009 exceeded €6.5 billion. They also estimated the technologies showcased could save the exchequer €70 million per year.
One of those technologies is looking to improve the delivery of future gene therapies through ventilators for patients in intensive care. The team behind it has a particular interest in acute lung injury and sepsis, a potentially fatal condition that can arise post-surgery when the body’s immune system starts to damage its own tissues in “friendly fire”, explained John Laffey, professor of anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at NUI Galway.
He is working with Prof Tim O’Brien’s group at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (Remedi) and with Galway-based medical device company Aerogen on nebuliser technology that would help protect gene therapies being delivered through a ventilator.
“The problems with the older nebuliser technologies is that they generally damage the genes, and we are looking at newer technologies to minimise the damage,” explains Laffey. Aerogen – which supplies intensive care equipment in Ireland and about 50 other countries – had a nebuliser that could fit the bill. “They have a new nebuliser technology that is much kinder,” said Laffey.
“That’s not why the technology was developed. It was developed to more effectively make a fine mist out of medications, but we have been using it specifically at its ability to deliver these therapies.”
So far, the researchers have shown in a lab model that therapeutic agents can pass through the kinder nebuliser and still remain able to hit target cells, and Laffey believes this puts them ahead.
“We think we have a specific advantage because the nebuliser [would] mean the virus gets to the lung in better condition,” he said.
Meanwhile, the research, which receives funding from the Health Research Board, Science Foundation Ireland and the European Research Council, is also looking at the biology of acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis and at potential therapies that could be delivered.
Also showcased at Wednesday’s event were stents, remote monitoring equipment, pain management devices, the endoscopic electroporation device (EndoVe), a device that applies a brief electric pulse to a tumour to encourage it to take up anti-cancer drugs more effectively. EndoVe is currently in human trials for colorectal cancer.
And while it’s early days, the findings are promising, according to inventor Dr Declan Soden from the Cork Cancer Research Centre at University College Cork.
