Low Acyl Gellan as an Excipient to Improve the Sprayability and Mucoadhesion of Iota Carrageenan in a Nasal Spray to Prevent Infection With SARS-CoV-2
Robinson et al.,
Low Acyl Gellan as an Excipient to Improve the Sprayability and Mucoadhesion of Iota Carrageenan in a Nasal..,
Frontiers in Medical Technology, doi:10.3389/fmedt.2021.687681
Formulation of a carrageenan nasal spray using gellan as an excipient to improve sprayability and mucoadhesion. Authors report 4x greater coverage versus carrageenan alone. See also
[Moakes].
Robinson et al., 16 Jun 2021, United Kingdom, peer-reviewed, 3 authors.
Contact:
l.m.grover@bham.ac.uk.
Abstract: ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 16 June 2021
doi: 10.3389/fmedt.2021.687681
Low Acyl Gellan as an Excipient to
Improve the Sprayability and
Mucoadhesion of Iota Carrageenan
in a Nasal Spray to Prevent Infection
With SARS-CoV-2
Thomas E. Robinson, Richard J. A. Moakes and Liam M. Grover*
Healthcare Technologies Institute, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Edited by:
Anthony Bull,
Imperial College London,
United Kingdom
Reviewed by:
Canhui Yang,
Southern University of Science and
Technology, China
Kobra Omidfar,
Tehran University of Medical
Sciences, Iran
*Correspondence:
Liam M. Grover
l.m.grover@bham.ac.uk
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Diagnostic and Therapeutic Devices,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Medical Technology
Received: 29 March 2021
Accepted: 20 May 2021
Published: 16 June 2021
Citation:
Robinson TE, Moakes RJA and
Grover LM (2021) Low Acyl Gellan as
an Excipient to Improve the
Sprayability and Mucoadhesion of Iota
Carrageenan in a Nasal Spray to
Prevent Infection With SARS-CoV-2.
Front. Med. Technol. 3:687681.
doi: 10.3389/fmedt.2021.687681
The COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as the widespread persistence of influenza and
the common cold, create the need for new medical devices such as nasal sprays to
prevent viral infection and transmission. Carrageenan, a sulfated polysaccharide, has a
broad, non-pharmacological antiviral capacity, however it performs poorly in two key
areas; spray coverage and mucoadhesion. Therefore gellan, another polysaccharide,
was investigated as an excipient to improve these properties. It was found that
viscoelastic relaxation time was the key predictor of spray coverage, and by reducing
this value from 2.5 to 0.25 s, a mix of gellan and carrageenan gave more than four
times the coverage of carrageenan alone (p < 0.0001). Gellan also demonstrated
enhanced adhesion to a mucus analog that increased significantly with time (p < 0.0001),
suggesting the development of specific gellan–mucin interactions. This property was
conferred to carrageenan on mixing the two polymers. Together, this data suggests
that gellan is a promising excipient to improve both sprayability and mucoadhesion of
carrageenan for use in antiviral nasal sprays.
Keywords: antiviral polymer, nasal spray, mucoadhesion, gellan, carrageenan, COVID-19
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