Nanoparticle drug delivery for ARDS

Decades of ARDS clinical trials have failed to yield molecularly targeted therapies for patients with ARDS. The majority of prior trials have used systemic delivery (intravenous or oral administration) in order to deliver drugs to the lungs. An alternative approach is to directly deliver drugs to the lungs via the inhalational route. Our group has pioneered the use of pulmonary delivery of lipid nanoparticles containing an anti-inflammatory microRNA (miR-146a) to prevent ventilator-induced lung injury. Our work has also shown that lung macrophages are mechanosensitive and we recently developed nanoparticles to specifically deliver miR-146a to these cells to prevent lung injury in a model of ARDS from hemorrhagic shock.