ArticleScience advances2017
Nanoparticles that do not adhere to mucus provide uniform and long-lasting drug delivery to airways following inhalation.
Article in Science advances, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 136 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
136 citing papers in PubMed, 304 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- The Impact of Surfactants in Tailoring Nanostructured Lipid Carriers for Inhaled Levofloxacin.ACS omega · 2026Article
- Review
- Unraveling Oral Fate of Poly(Lipoic Acid)s: Mechanistic Insights and Delivery Horizons.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Recent advances in the application of polymeric nanoparticles to the pulmonary delivery of mRNA.Nanomedicine (London, England) · 2026Review
- Inhaled nucleic acid delivery systems for the treatment of pulmonary interstitial diseases: Challenges and opportunities.Acta pharmaceutica Sinica. B · 2026Review
- Spatiotemporal targeting of messenger RNA lipid nanoparticles to the endometrium for the treatment of reproductive disorders.Nature nanotechnology · 2026Article
- Aerosol Delivery of Polyelectrolyte Surfactant-Antimicrobial Nanoparticles to the Lungs.Pharmaceutical research · 2026Article
- Inhalation-Based Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Targeting the Diseased Lower Airways in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.Pharmaceutics · 2026Review
- A softness zwitterionic micelles efficiently deliver inhaled nintedanib by enhancing airway mucus penetration.Science advances · 2026Article
- From Pharmacological Uncertainty to Inhalation Development: An Evidence-Gated Roadmap forDrug design, development and therapy · 2026Review
- Computational Design and Glycoengineering of Interferon-Lambda for Nasal Prophylaxis Against Respiratory Viruses.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- An organoid-guided roadmap for precision delivery of epigallocatechin gallate in oral submucous fibrosis.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Review
- A Systematic Review of Advanced Drug Delivery Systems: Engineering Strategies, Barrier Penetration, and Clinical Progress (2016-April 2025).Pharmaceutics · 2025Review
- Nebulized inhalation of novel baicalein liposome based on phospholipid complex to alleviate acute lung injury.Drug delivery · 2025Article
- Simulation of drug transport in airway surface liquid considering mucus flow and ciliary interaction.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Inhalable Nanomaterial Discoveries for Lung Cancer Therapy: A Review.Pharmaceutics · 2025Review
- Antimicrobial Loaded Graft-Copolymer Nanoparticles for Treatment ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Silicon Carbide Nanowires Impair Mucociliary Clearance-Mediated Innate Immunity in Primary Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells.ACS nano · 2025Article
- Hydrogen-induced disruption of the airway mucus barrier enhances nebulized RNA delivery to reverse pulmonary fibrosis.Science advances · 2025Article
76 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Mucoadhesive particles (MAP) have been widely explored for pulmonary drug delivery because of their perceived benefits in improving particle residence in the lungs. However, retention of particles adhesively trapped in airway mucus may be limited by physiologic mucus clearance mechanisms. In contrast, particles that avoid mucoadhesion and have diameters smaller than mucus mesh spacings rapidly penetrate mucus layers [mucus-penetrating particles (MPP)], which we hypothesized would provide prolonged lung retention compared to MAP. We compared in vivo behaviors of variously sized, polystyrene-based MAP and MPP in the lungs following inhalation. MAP, regardless of particle size, were aggregated and poorly distributed throughout the airways, leading to rapid clearance from the lungs. Conversely, MPP as large as 300 nm exhibited uniform distribution and markedly enhanced retention compared to size-matched MAP. On the basis of these findings, we formulated biodegradable MPP (b-MPP) with an average diameter of <300 nm and examined their behavior following inhalation relative to similarly sized biodegradable MAP (b-MAP). Although b-MPP diffused rapidly through human airway mucus ex vivo, b-MAP did not. Rapid b-MPP movements in mucus ex vivo correlated to a more uniform distribution within the airways and enhanced lung retention time as compared to b-MAP. Furthermore, inhalation of b-MPP loaded with dexamethasone sodium phosphate (DP) significantly reduced inflammation in a mouse model of acute lung inflammation compared to both carrier-free DP and DP-loaded MAP. These studies provide a careful head-to-head comparison of MAP versus MPP following inhalation and challenge a long-standing dogma that favored the use of MAP for pulmonary drug delivery.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.