Science behind protective spray

The makers of a nasal spray launched last year by start-up Akita Biosciences have pulled back the curtain on how their product works ( Adv. Mater. 2024, DOI: 10.1002/adma.202406348 ). The company’s cofounders describe how the spray coats the nasal cavity with a protective layer, captures droplets from the air, and neutralizes them—all using ingredients that the US Food and Drug Administration has categorized as inactive or generally recognized as safe (GRAS). The researchers call the product pathogen capture and neutralizing spray (PCANS); its market name is Profi. Nitin Joshi and Jeff Karp, coauthors and Harvard Medical School anesthesiology researchers, originally intended to create a nasal spray to help treat multiple sclerosis. Karp says that when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they reengineered it as a preventive for airborne nasal pathogens more broadly. “We started to think, maybe there’s a real opportunity here to create a nasal spray that could provide