Accelerating Innovation in Vaginal Formulations in Support of Women's Health Grant

This grant aims to enhance women's health by promoting the development of innovative vaginal drug delivery systems. Despite their potential benefits, such as improved efficacy and reduced systemic side effects, there is a lack of research and acceptance for vaginal formulations. The initiative seeks to address these gaps by fostering user-friendly technologies and gathering insights from women to create impactful reproductive health products.

Local delivery of drugs into the vagina for prevention and treatment of female-specific conditions remains understudied and under-utilized despite clear potential advantages such as discreetness, potent local efficacy, large surface area for drug absorption, high potential for API dosage sparing, potential for fewer systemic side effects, as well as providing autonomy and empowerment of women. Several key drivers may be responsible for this lag, including paucity of mechanistic biological data, particularly from high-burden settings such as low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to support the development of specific formulations for vaginal use as well as a persistent misconception that vaginally delivered products may not be embraced by women and their sexual partners. Several of our priorities for impactful products for sexual and reproductive health will require vaginal delivery for immediate, on-demand use. We seek to catalyze the development of innovative technologies and approaches that can safely and effectively deliver a wide range of vaginal products. We expect these approaches to have user appeal, including promotion of self-care capability and other beneficial features that women seek, hence the need to couple discovery research with high-quality end-user input.