The power of powder: Nasal drug delivery for quicker uptake
Nasal drug delivery is a dynamic area in pharmaceutical innovation. What was once a route for decongestants and allergy sprays is now being explored for everything from emergency treatments to vaccines – and even shows potential for future central nervous system therapies.
March 3, 2026
The scientific logic behind nasal drug delivery is straightforward – pharmaceuticals absorbed through the nasal mucosa bypass the gastrointestinal tract and liver, enabling faster, more efficient uptake.
Nasal delivery is one of the big focus areas in drug delivery right now.
“Nasal delivery is one of the big focus areas in drug delivery right now,” says Nikolaj Sørensen, CEO of Orexo, a drug delivery formulation company based in Uppsala, Sweden. The company recently divested its US commercial business and now focuses fully on its R&D activities.
Orexo in agreement with Dexcel to divest US rights to Zubsolv
The company has signed an agreement with Dexcel Pharma USA, to divest the full rights to Zubsolv (buprenorphine/naloxone) sublingual tablet CIII, for the treatment of opioid use disorder, in the US.
Nasal delivery allows for a higher drug load and higher and faster bioavailability, making it both quicker and more precise than other delivery methods, which is crucial especially in emergency situations.
Orexo has developed AmorphOX, a unique technology based on powder rather than liquid, and three of the four candidates in its pipeline are emergency medications for opioid overdose. Its powder technology has shown good results in chemical degradation over time for many different modalities, including small molecules, peptides, and biologics.
“We are using a powder so we can achieve a higher stability and longer shelf life, and less sensitivity to temperature variations,” Sørensen says.
“We have seen that our powder technology AmorphOX delivers very strongly on stability. Vaccines or proteins and peptides – that otherwise are very sensitive – can be kept stable in room temperature using our powder technology,” he explains.
Future vaccines and CNS treatment
When it comes to vaccines, obvious potential targets are air-borne viruses, respiratory diseases and seasonal flus, Sørensen muses – although he stresses that Orexo can deliver the vaccine vehicle but does not presently develop vaccines. The stability and long shelf life of the powder technology makes it a versatile option to traditional vaccines, particularly in under-served regions of the world.
“The most serious infections emerge in areas of the world where you definitely don’t have access to healthcare infrastructure, and where the temperatures are often high. Access to nurses who can travel around with a cooling bag that keeps the vaccines frozen is very limited. The opportunity to give vaccines nasally in those regions is very promising,” he says.
The nose offers a route that bypasses the blood–brain barrier, a major obstacle in treating neurological diseases.
Looking ahead at the next decade, Sørensen points to central nervous system diseases as an intriguing frontier, given the potential for nosetobrain delivery. The nose offers a route that bypasses the blood–brain barrier, a major obstacle in treating neurological diseases.
“There is a pathway that could get medications into the brain through the nose, through nerves that go from the nose up to the brain. This is an area that, in the long term, could be a new way of treating CNS diseases. We know that a lot of the Alzheimer’s medications are good in theory, but one of the issues is that they don’t reach into the places in the brain where it’s needed,” Sørensen says.
Published: March 3, 2026
