Inhalable Therapeutics to Treat Chronic Lung Disorders

The prevalence of chronic respiratory disease is rising, with more than 30 million cases in the US and over 500 million cases worldwide. Nearly 226,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year. Although the lungs are highly accessible for delivering therapies, biological barriers such as the complex branched anatomy, disease-related airway narrowing, mucociliary clearance, alveolar macrophage uptake pose a formidable challenge to effective drug delivery.

The Menon Lab is developing drug delivery systems with unique biomimetic coatings and cargoes that can overcome these barriers for sustained drug delivery. We are also harnessing our expertise in targeted drug delivery to develop therapeutic formulations that can target and bind to disease-specific markers in lung disease, thus delivering therapies precisely to the areas of interest.

Selected Publications

Mucopenetrative Lipid–Polymer nanoparticles show Potent Anti-Inflammatory activity in a human Lung-on-Chip model
Perera KD, Vasta AK, Menon JU. International Journal of Pharmaceutics 2026 Feb 19:126688 [DOI]

Citrus pectin-coated inhalable PLGA nanoparticles for treatment of pulmonary fibrosis
Perera K, Ghumman M, Sorkhdini P, Norbrun C, Negash S, Zhou Y, Menon JU*. Journal of Materials Chemistry B 2025;13(10):3325-39 [DOI]

Impact of Nebulization on the Physicochemical Properties of Polymer–Lipid Hybrid Nanoparticles for Pulmonary Drug Delivery
Gonsalves A, Menon JU*. Int J Mol Sci 2024. 25(9). 5028 [DOI]

Development and Characterization of Lung Surfactant – coated Polymer Nanoparticles for Sustained Pulmonary Drug Delivery
Gonsalves A, Sorkhdini P, Bazinet J, Ghumman M, Dhamecha D, Zhou Y, Menon JU*. Biomaterials Advances 2023: 213430 [DOI]

Dual-Drug Containing Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Lung Cancer Therapy
Menon JU, Kuriakose A, Iyer R, Hernandez E, Gandee L, Zhang S, Takahashi M, Zhang Z, Saha D, Nguyen KT. Scientific reports 2017. 7(1): 13249 [DOI]