Prisys Biotech has built a nonhuman primate (NHP) respiratory research platform that combines airway drug delivery, in vivo imaging and lung function assessment. Together these allow human respiratory disease to be modelled with reasonable fidelity and candidate therapeutics to be evaluated against asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and allergic airway disorders.
The centre of the platform is an intratracheal and bronchoscopic drug delivery system that gives controlled, reproducible administration to the lower respiratory tract, closely mirroring the way these products are given to patients.
Precision Airway Drug Delivery Technologies
Three delivery routes cover most of what a respiratory programme needs. They differ in how much of the lung they reach and how precisely they can be aimed, so the choice follows the question being asked rather than convenience.
Intratracheal Aerosol Administration
Equipment and process:
- An Aerogen vibrating mesh nebulizer integrated with a mechanical ventilator.
- Under anesthesia, a tracheal cannula is inserted, and the nebulized drug aerosol is delivered directly into the bronchi and alveoli through the ventilation circuit.
Advantages:
- Uniform whole-lung drug distribution, closely simulating clinical inhalation therapy such as asthma inhalers.
- Real-time airway resistance monitoring, which supports pharmacodynamic evaluation.
Applications:
- Induction and treatment of asthma in OVA-sensitized NHP models.
- Evaluation of inhalable formulations, bronchodilators, corticosteroids or biologics targeting airway inflammation.
Bronchoscopic Targeted Administration
Equipment and process:
- A clinical-grade bronchoscope for precise delivery to specific lung lobes, for example the right lower lobe.
- Drug or modeling agents are instilled under direct visualization.
Advantages:
- High precision with intra-animal controls: one lobe receives the treatment while other lobes serve as reference tissue.
- Suitable for localized disease induction and focal drug testing.
Applications:
- Establishment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) models by bronchoscopic instillation of bleomycin into designated lobes.
- Testing of anti-fibrotic agents and gene therapies.
The intra-animal control design is what makes this route useful for mechanism work. Because each animal carries both treated and untreated lobes, variability between animals drops out of the comparison, and a small group can still produce a readable signal.
Whole-Body Exposure System
For environmental exposure studies, Prisys provides controlled chambers for chronic smoke or pollutant exposure, enabling the establishment of COPD and chronic bronchitis models that replicate long-term human inhalation conditions. Exposure here is measured in weeks to months rather than in a single dose, so chamber stability and the record of what the animal actually breathed carry as much weight as the endpoint panel.
Physiological Monitoring And Functional Evaluation
To ensure data accuracy and animal safety, real-time physiological and respiratory monitoring runs throughout drug administration and modeling procedures:
- Continuous tracking of oxygen saturation (SpO₂), respiration rate, tidal volume and airway resistance (RL).
- Pulmonary function testing (PFT), including methacholine (ACH) challenge, to determine PC₅₀, the concentration causing a 50% increase in airway resistance, which quantifies bronchial hyperreactivity.
- Imaging-based assessments using CT and MRI for dynamic lung volume, perfusion and lesion quantification.
NHP Respiratory Disease Models
The models below differ in induction route and readout, but they share the same principle: reproduce the human phenotype closely enough that a negative result is informative.
Asthma Model
Induction protocol:
- Sensitization phase: subcutaneous (SC) or intraperitoneal (IP) injection of ovalbumin (OVA) with alum and LPS adjuvants.
- Challenge phase: aerosolized OVA exposure using intratracheal delivery to elicit acute airway inflammation.
Key evaluation parameters:
- Immediate asthmatic response (IAR): >100% increase in RL with hypoxia and tachypnea.
- Airway hyperresponsiveness: ACH-PC₅₀ analysis.
- BALF analysis: eosinophil count and cytokine profile (IL-4, IL-5, IL-13).
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Model
Methodology:
- Bleomycin instillation via bronchoscope to three designated lobes (left lower, right middle and right lower).
Assessment:
- High-resolution CT (HRCT) for longitudinal fibrosis monitoring (ground-glass opacity, reticulation, lung volume loss).
- Histopathology using H&E and Masson's trichrome staining to quantify collagen deposition.
- Blood gas analysis (PaO₂) for respiratory function evaluation.
Application:
- Preclinical validation of antifibrotic drugs such as nintedanib or pirfenidone, supported by quantitative imaging and pathological data.
COPD And Other Models
Prisys also supports studies on:
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic bronchitis via long-term smoke exposure.
- Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) induced by LPS or acid aspiration.
- Allergic rhinitis (AR) models, with the ability to co-establish systemic allergic disease models such as combined AR plus atopic dermatitis plus asthma.
Integrated Strengths Of The Respiratory Platform
Clinical-grade precision: drug delivery at the lung-lobe level with real-time physiological monitoring.
Translational relevance: human-like dosing routes and disease phenotypes, which keeps preclinical outcomes closer to what a clinical team will see.
Multimodal evaluation: imaging, pathology, PFT and immunological assays read against the same animals, so efficacy and mechanism can be argued from one dataset.
