Opening the Nasal Route to Biologics: Nanopharm and Aptar Pharma Demonstrate Development of Intranasal Antisense Oligonucleotide Liquid and Powder Formulations
At the IPAC-RS Nasal Innovation Forum 2026, Silvia Matiz and Sana Hosseini presented data to demonstrate that Antisense Oligonucleotide (ASO) biologics can be formulated for intranasal delivery without compromising molecular integrity during manufacturing and device aerosolization, a notable development for this therapeutic class.
Biologics are reshaping the drug development pipeline, but their size and structural sensitivity have long made them difficult to deliver by anything other than injection. Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) in particular have attracted growing interest across areas such as rare disease and neurology because they can selectively target disease mechanisms at the genetic level. This has fueled interest in alternative administration routes that could improve patient experience while preserving therapeutic performance.
The nasal route presents a genuinely interesting alternative for drug delivery due to its non-invasive nature, its ability to enable rapid onset of action and improvement in patient compliance. And, for select modalities, it opens a direct nose-to-brain pathway that bypasses the blood-brain barrier entirely. Despite these key benefits for the entire ecosystem, from pharma to patient, there has always been a key question that has to date remained unanswered: does the mechanical stress of spraying or aerosolizing a complex biologic molecule damage it beyond therapeutic use?
In an internally sponsored R&D project, Nanopharm and Aptar Pharma set out to answer this question directly, and the results were shared this month in New Jersey at IPAC-RS Nasal Innovation Forum 2026 in a talk titled “Insights into Intranasal Oligonucleotide Delivery: From Formulation and Process Design to Device Performance.”
Combining Nanopharm’s formulation and analytical development expertise with the wider Aptar Pharma’s specialisms in device development and clinical scale-up, the project reinforces the power of a collaborative approach to developing formulations with complex molecules within a comparatively complex administration route.
The study centered on an Antisense Oligonucleotide (ASO) used as a representative model for this class of nucleic acid therapeutics. Working across both liquid and dry powder formats, the team developed three spray-dried powder and six liquid prototype formulations, including preservative-free variants, using tailored excipient selection and particle engineering strategies to protect the molecule through manufacture and device actuation.
Selected lead formulations were then paired with devices drawn from Aptar Pharma’s comprehensive nasal drug delivery portfolio: active and passive Unidose (UDS) powder systems, Multi-Dose and Bidose (BDS) liquid platforms, including preservative-free options and nose-to-brain delivery solutions.
These findings help reduce one of the key uncertainties surrounding nasal delivery of oligonucleotide therapeutics, given that the oligonucleotide’s structural integrity held up across formulation, manufacture, and aerosolization, with device performance including droplet size distribution, plume geometry and dose delivery, meeting the standards expected of a nasal combination product. To date, no commercially available nasal product exists for this class of molecules, which makes this proof of concept a significant step for a therapeutic category that has, until now, been confined largely to injectable routes.
For biotech and pharma teams evaluating delivery strategy for biologic candidates, the key takeaway is the mitigation of risk and sponsors now have data driven evidence that Aptar Pharma’s device platforms are compatible with even the most structurally delicate biologic modalities, proteins, encapsulated and naked nucleic acids.
This work also reflects a broader capability across Aptar Pharma’s product development services ecosystem. Pharma partners can now benefit from a single, truly integrated partner spanning formulation development, analytical testing, device selection, clinical batch supply and commercial scale manufacture and lifecycle management.
To that end, this study is the first to be published by Aptar in a series of internally sponsored projects. The next phase will evaluate Aptar Pharma’s portfolio of pulmonary devices with ASO biologic formulations, as well as the development of both nasal and pulmonary products for two additional classes of biologics, including nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems encapsulating nucleic acid therapeutics. The data, which will be presented at future conferences, will further demonstrate how Aptar Pharma’s integrated development capabilities and scientific expertise can effectively support the delivery of complex biologics, each with its own unique formulation, stability and device-performance challenges.
As more biologic candidates move through development, the question of how to deliver them in a way that is non-invasive, patient friendly and effective now has its first clear evidence base, providing a breakthrough insight into the feasibility of intranasal delivery for antisense oligonucleotides. These findings suggest that the answer may, in many ways, lie in nasal drug delivery.
