Marc Giroux, CEO of the Bothell, Washington-based company
Kurve
Technology, has combined personal necessity and ingenuity
to create a device that has the potential to change the
way drugs are delivered to and absorbed by the body.
Giroux became interested in nasal drug delivery systems
out of dire necessity. Beginning at age 12, he suffered
from chronic rhinitis and sinusitis: conditions that affected
his quality of life in a number of significant ways. For
years, he was forced to sleep upright. He lost his sense
of smell when he was a teenager, and had five sinus surgeries
prior to the age of 35. For most of his adult life, his
physicians' therapy of choice was the administration of
a variety of drugs and drug combinations using existing
nasal delivery systems.
After years of this approach, Giroux began intently questioning
his doctors about why his condition wasn't improving. He
was told that the problem wasn't with the drugs themselves,
but rather with their delivery mechanism. The majority of
drugs administered by nasal devices then in use reach only
the anterior portion of the nasal cavity, where most of
the medication drains to the back of the throat and is swallowed.
With those mechanisms, only a small fraction of the drug
reaches areas of the nasal cavity where it can be readily
absorbed. The realization that he wasn't getting better
as a result of an inadequate delivery system, rather than
pharmaceutically ineffective drugs, led Giroux to take matters
into his own hands.
Determined to improve his condition, Giroux began to modify
a nebulizer: a device that transforms liquids into aerosols,
and is most commonly used to deliver drugs to the lungs.
His goal was to deliver aerosolized medications to the entire
nasal cavity.
Specifically, it was important for the aerosolized medications
to reach the paranasal sinuses, because the drugs he was
using were absorbed topically and therefore required direct
contact with the affected areas. After several failures
in converting a nebulizer into a nasal drug delivery system,
he had a breakthrough in his design that enabled the nebulizer
to deliver a drug throughout the nasal cavity, including
the heretofore-inaccessible paranasal sinuses.
Using his invention, Giroux has successfully treated his
own sinusitis on a daily basis for the past two years-surely
a testament to the success of his product design. The result
of Giroux's tenacious efforts was the creation of a new
nasal drug delivery system, called ViaNase™, which
uses Kurve's proprietary Controlled Particle Dispersion
Technology. The ViaNase™ unit is about the size of
a deck of cards, and it consistently delivers aerosolized
liquid throughout the nasal cavity and into the paranasal
sinuses. In addition to being odorless, tasteless and painless,
the mechanism may reduce the amount of drug required for
effective treatment.
While Giroux's personal experience and pre-clinical trials
at Oregon Health
Sciences University (OHSU) suggest ViaNase™ will
work with most existing nasally delivered drugs, it is also
likely to be useful for drugs targeted at systemic conditions
such as migraine headaches and cardiovascular disease. Research
is presently underway to adapt the technology to work with
solutions with varying viscosities and to optimize droplet
sizes so it can be used with other types of drugs.
The addition of ViaNase™ to the list of drug delivery
devices will ultimately give medical practitioners and patients
more treatment choices. Industry analysts predict the nasal
drug delivery market will grow by 15 percent per year, to
$9 billion by 2008. As a result of the hard work by Giroux
and Kurve Technology, Kurve was recently awarded $800,000
in early-stage funding and has formed a partnership with
the Italian aerosol device company Medel.
DWT is pleased to recognize Marc Giroux as Inventor of
the Month, and looks forward to further developments in
Kurve Technology's ViaNase™ system-for the benefit
of people who suffer from simple seasonal allergies as well
as those with serious diseases requiring more effective
drug delivery systems.
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