A University of Washington team has developed a versatile platform to simultaneously offer contraception and prevent HIV. Electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers can dissolve to release drugs, providing a platform for cheap, discrete and reversible protection. The research was published In November, 2012 in the Public Library of Science’s open-access journal PLoS One. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded the UW Researchers almost US $1million to pursue the technology.
The corresponding author Kim Woodrow, a UW assistant professor of bioengineering said “Our dream is to create a product women can use to protect themselves from HIV infection and unintended pregnancy. We have the drugs to do that. It’s really about delivering them in a way that makes them more potent, and allows a woman the need to use it.”
Electrospinning uses an electric field to catapult a charged fluid jet through air to create very fine, nanometer-scale fibers. The fibers may be better at delivering medicine than existing technologies such as gels, tablets or pills, due to this versatility.
At a lab meeting last year, Woodrow presented the concept, and co-authors Emily Krogstad and Cameron Ball, both first-year graduate students, pursued the idea.
They first dissolved polymers approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV to create a gooey solution that passes through a syringe. As the stream encounters the electric field, it stretches to create thin fibers measuring 100 to several thousand nanometers that whip through the air and eventually stick to a collecting plate (one nanometer is about one 25-millionth of an inch). The final material is a stretchy fabric that can physically block sperm or release chemical contraceptives and anti-virals.
“This method allows controlled release of multiple compounds,” Ball said. “We were able to tune the fibers to have different release properties.”
- One of the fabrics they made dissolves within minutes, potentially offering users immediate, discrete protection against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
- Another dissolves gradually over a few days, providing an option for sustained delivery, more like the birth-control pill, to provide contraception and guard against HIV.
The electrospun cloth could be inserted directly in the body or be used as a coating on vaginal rings or other products.
Electrospinning has existed for decades, but it’s only recently been automated to make it practical for applications such as filtration and tissue engineering.
This is the first study to use nanofibers for vaginal drug delivery.
While this technology is more discrete than a condom, and potentially more versatile than pills or plastic or rubber devices, researchers say there is no single right answer.