Nebu-Flow Raises £3.7M to Unlock Inhaled Drug Delivery for Hard-to-Nebulise Medicines

April 29, 2024

Nebu-Flow has secured £3.7 million in additional investment to accelerate the development of its nebuliser platform for inhaled drug delivery. The round was led by Science Creates Ventures (SCVC), the venture capital arm of science accelerator Science Creates, and supported by Scottish Enterprise, Foresight WAE Technology, SIS Ventures, Ascension, and Conduit EIS Impact Fund. The funding follows an earlier £1.7 million round and a £1 million grant from Innovate UK, building a meaningful cumulative capital base to take the technology through to the commercialisation stage. Proceeds will be used to deepen product development, progress regulatory approval activities, and expand the team.

Respiratory diseases represent the leading cause of death and disability globally, with estimated clinical costs of €400 billion per year in Europe alone. The global inhalable drug market was valued at approximately $33 billion in 2023, of which the nebuliser segment accounts for over $1 billion. Within that market, there is a significant and largely unmet need for nebulisers capable of delivering a new generation of biologic and RNA-based medicines—treatments that hold substantial therapeutic potential but are too fragile or complex in their formulation to be handled by conventional nebuliser technology. That is the specific problem Nebu-Flow was built to solve.

The company's core technology uses surface acoustic waves to generate extremely small, precisely controlled droplets—an approach that enables efficient delivery of hard-to-nebulise drugs, including biologics and RNA-based formulations, to the peripheral lungs, as well as opening routes for systemic drug delivery via inhalation rather than injection. The platform is patented across the UK, US, and Canada. Unlike conventional nebulisers, which rely on aerodynamic or mechanical disruption that can damage sensitive drug molecules, Nebu-Flow's acoustic approach preserves drug integrity throughout the aerosolisation process. The company has been characterised as developing technology that could make previously impractical inhaled therapies into viable clinical options.

Nebu-Flow has assembled a team with deep domain expertise. Its chair, Dr John Pritchard, brings over 25 years of inhalation drug delivery experience from senior roles at GSK, AstraZeneca, 3M, and Philips. Dr Gary Pitcairn, formerly Head of Project Leadership (Respiratory) at AstraZeneca, joined the advisory board in the year preceding this round. The company is engaged with industrial partners in the UK and North America who are trialling the technology as regulatory approval processes advance. It also won the Business Start-up Award from the Institute of Physics for its application of surface acoustic waves to nebulisation.

SCVC Managing Partner Dr Harry Destecroix cited the team's achievement of technical and commercial milestones as the basis for leading the round, describing the nebulisation technology as poised to transform respiratory drug delivery. Scottish Enterprise, which has supported Nebu-Flow from its earliest stages through feasibility grants and entrepreneurship programmes, noted the company as an example of how university spinouts can scale to international commercial relevance while creating high-value jobs in Scotland. CEO Dr Elijah Nazarzadeh said the investment positions the company for the inhalation delivery of RNA-based formulations—a reference to the next frontier of inhaled medicine that has gained significant attention following the success of mRNA therapies in other delivery formats.

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