Jurata’s journey began in 2014, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Our founders saw a critical need for vaccines that could be distributed without refrigeration and administered without needles in the hardest-to-reach places.

Partnering with a team developing a live attenuated adenovirus vaccine, we created a novel film. When reconstituted and delivered intranasally, it conferred 100% survival in non-human primates challenged with a lethal dose of Ebola. By comparison, only 50% of animals that received a traditional intramuscular injection and 66% of those given a traditional intranasal formulation survived. Equally impressive, our films were stored at room temperature for 30 days and then shipped without special handling — conditions that would compromise stability for many vaccines and biologics in use today.

In 2020, as a global pandemic unfolded, it became clear once again that existing cold chain logistics were not enough to meet the challenge. Doses were wasted, long lines formed at clinics, and remote communities remained unprotected. At the same time, supply chain disruptions and lockdown restrictions prevented many people from accessing treatments for chronic and acute conditions unrelated to the coronavirus. Jurata’s team began to recognize the potential value of its technology not only in public health but across a wide range of applications where thermostability and handling requirements create obstacles to patient access.