Targeted drug delivery lifts healthcare in remote communities

A meet up between old friends led Associate Professor Vinh Nguyen from the UNSW Sydney School of Chemistry to become the scientific advisor and UNSW lead collaborator for the Benignancy Group – a biotech company designing novel therapies for diseases of the ear, nose, throat, head and neck.  

“I came across Benignancy when I bumped into their former research director, Connor O’Meara,” A/Prof. Nguyen says. “We’d met at ANU when we were both completing our PhDs around 15 years ago.”

A/Prof. Nguyen says what particularly drew him to eventually work with the group was the commitment to social good as well as an individualised, patient-centric approach.

“The therapies they’re developing prioritise remote communities, where access to doctors, medical facilities and treatments is difficult and expensive,” he says.

The therapies are delivered via degradable mesh devices, which are embedded with targeted medicines. When implanted, these provide controlled and sustained treatment to patients without the need to frequently visit clinics.

Challenges & opportunities

Benignancy was founded in 2018 by its CEO Professor Thomas Havas. His collaboration with A/Prof. Nguyen focuses on developing an innovative, cost-effective solution for chronic ear disease in Indigenous populations, with the potential to transform further treatments for a wider range of medical conditions.

Chronic ear disease, particularly with perforated eardrums, is a major health issue in many rural and Indigenous communities. In these areas, access to high-quality medical care is limited. Treatments tend to be invasive, costly and difficult to manage.

Prof. Havas has spent most of his career working in Aboriginal health and has seen this issue firsthand. He says it’s the biggest problem in Aboriginal health in Australia. But the problem is worldwide.

“My experience from working in New Zealand, working in North America, working in Canada is that most indigenous populations have a very high prevalence of chronic ear disease,” he says.

"While traditional treatments for ear disease might be successful in the hospital setting, they often fail in real-world conditions."

“Throughout southern China, Hong Kong, Singapore and coming down through Indonesia – about 70% of people can't even afford access to medical care.”

Conventional treatments for a perforated eardrum typically involve an operation under general anaesthesia – a procedure that is both time-consuming and expensive. While the surgery has an 80% success rate, the required post-operative care – which includes keeping the ear dry for up to 12 weeks – is often difficult to maintain. The nature of rural and outback areas, where the instinct is to jump into water for a swim on a hot day, means the success rate in the field can be much lower.

This can lead to children experiencing long-term educational and social disadvantages.

“If they get a hole in the eardrum, their hearing goes down, they get a wet discharge in the ear and it affects speech and language acquisition,” Prof. Havas says.

Prof. Havas and A/Prof. Nguyen are working on a biodegradable mesh to place directly into the ear and treat the perforated eardrum. They say the key innovation lies not only in the implant design but also in the precise release of the therapeutic agent.

“The mesh is impregnated with a drug that encourages tissue regeneration and closes the hole in the eardrum,” A/Prof. Nguyen says. “It would be engineered to ensure that the drug is delivered in a controlled and predictable manner, to facilitate an accelerated healing – eliminating the need for surgery.”

“This procedure could be done without anaesthesia and has shown an 80–90% success rate in preliminary trials,” Prof. Havas says.

While Prof. Havas brings decades of experience in patient care, A/Prof. Nguyen adds the cutting-edge research and technical know-how to make the mesh technology a reality.

Forward focused

The partnership is already showing results. The team has successfully developed the mesh, optimised the drug release mechanism and demonstrated that the product can be sterilised without compromising its efficacy.

“We've developed a totally novel way of putting drugs on the mesh. We've developed a way of showing that the release of that drug is predictable, ordered and as we want it. And we've shown that the drug, or analogues of the drug, accelerate healing in an eardrum,” Prof. Havas says.

With funding secured from various sources, they are aiming to begin lab-based trials by mid-2025.

“Our goal is to refine the mesh and drug delivery system further, with the intention of beginning clinical trials mid-2026,” Prof. Havas says.

“If successful, we will move towards manufacturing the product in Australia, with plans to make it available both domestically and internationally.”

In the long term, this technology could not only improve the lives of Indigenous Australians but also provide an affordable solution for populations in Southeast Asia and beyond – where the cost of traditional medical treatments is often prohibitive.

Prof. Havas says the potential for scalability is enormous.

“The end result is greater than the sum of the parts,” Prof. Havas says. “When clinicians and scientists collaborate effectively, we can achieve far more than either group could on their own."

The ear mesh is just the beginning. With additional projects already in the pipeline, the collaboration promises to deliver transformative changes to healthcare.

“Our ultimate goal is move to targeted cancer treatment delivery,” A/Prof. Nguyen says. “Particularly, nasopharyngeal cancer.”

Nasopharyngeal cancer is a type of head and neck cancer – which are some of the most common cancers. The causes and burdens of these diseases are dynamic, significant – and growing.

Prof. Havas says the current methods of treatment are therapy, radical surgery and chemotherapy.

“We’re aiming to apply modern immunotherapy topically by developing a mesh that that would develop a controlled delivery of appropriate agents to fight cancer,” he says.

But, is it achievable?

“It's like going to a dance,” Prof. Havas says. “You must dance with a lot of people until you pick the right partner.

“The dance with Vinh is in tune with what we need and want.”