UNC wins $4.47M for chemical weapons antidote R&D

Nanotechnology research pioneered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will be the basis of new research into developing better ways to deliver antidotes after a chemical attack.

University researchers will employ the the nanoparticle manufacturing technology discovered and developed in UNC labs called Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates, or PRINT. The technology allows for the customization of nanoparticles in particular sizes and shapes, which in turn improves how a drug is delivered to cells in the human body. The federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency is funding the five-year, $4.47 million project at UNC.

The UNC research aims to develop way to more quickly and easily administer antidotes to chemical weapons. It could lead to precisely engineered particles and microneedle patches loaded with nerve gas antidote for use in case of a chemical weapons attack.

“Every second matters when someone is exposed to a chemical agent, so identifying a way to simply slap a patch to someone’s arm, in an instant, could have a life-saving impact,” Joseph DeSimone, a chemistry professor at UNC and professor of chemical engineering at N.C. State University said in a statement. “We are trying to find the best way to make the delivery of an antidote easy, effective and widely accessible.”

The project will be led by DeSimone, who invented the PRINT technology with his students in 2004. Microneedles are tiny structures incorporated into a patch that would be applied to the skin. The microneedles would dissolve for rapid absorption of the nerve gas antidote. The UNC research aims to optimize the design of the arrays of microneedles. The scalability of the PRINT technology will allow for large-scale manufacturing of the microneedle patches.

The PRINT technology led to UNC spinning out Research Triangle Park nanotech company Liquidia, which DeSimone co-founded in 2004. Liquidia has used PRINT technology as the basis for improving vaccine delivery, work that led funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and later partnerships with GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), among others.