An In Situ Curing, Shear-Responsive Biomaterial Designed for Durable Embolization of Microvasculature.

Endovascular embolization is a minimally-invasive technique whereby blood vessels supplying pathological structures are selectively occluded with various embolic agents. In many scenarios, it is desirable for the embolic to distally penetrate to the level of the microvasculature, which maximizes devascularization. Existing agents exhibit inconsistent distal penetration and have other limitations including tendency for proximal reflux, patient pain during infusion, lack of fluoroscopic radiopacity, potential for catheter adhesion, susceptibility to recanalization, and other usability challenges.

Formulation, high throughput in vitro screening and in vivo functional characterization of nanoemulsion-based intranasal vaccine adjuvants.

Vaccine adjuvants have been reported to induce both mucosal and systemic immunity when applied to mucosal surfaces and this dual response appears important for protection against certain pathogens. Despite the potential advantages, however, no mucosal adjuvants are currently approved for human use. Evaluating compounds as mucosal adjuvants is a slow and costly process due to the need for lengthy animal immunogenicity studies.

Nanoemulsion mucosal adjuvant uniquely activates cytokine production by nasal ciliated epithelium and induces dendritic cell trafficking.

While the nasal mucosa is a potentially useful site for human immunization, toxin-based nasal adjuvants are generally unsafe and less effective in humans. Safe mucosal adjuvants that activate protective immunity via mucosal administration are highly dependent on barrier antigen sampling by epithelial and DCs. Here, we demonstrate that protein antigens formulated in unique oil-in-water nanoemulsions (NEs) result in distinctive transcellular antigen uptake in ciliated nasal epithelial cells, leading to delivery into nasal associated lymphoid tissue.