ZephyrAquilon

Lausanne, Switzerland · Seed stage

Enabling the inhalation of fragile biologicsSolving a major bottleneck in drug delivery

MEMS-enabled Faraday-wave atomization.

We use Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems, the silicon technology inside every smartphone's microphone and gyroscope, to build a handheld nebulizer for the inhalation of fragile biologics.

See the technology Request the deck
MEMS chip · Faraday-wave atomization (illustrative)
  1. 1Piezo-driven chip
  2. 2Multi-stage amplifying Fourier horn
  3. 3Faraday waves form at the tip
  4. 4Wave crests pinch off into uniform droplets at onset amplitude
WITHIN TARGET WINDOW (1–5 µm) —%
THROUGHPUT · 2 MHz DESIGN POINT ≈0.4mL/min
Inhaled biologicsUniform and gentle aerosolizationTight 1–5 µm droplets at low shear, capable on viscous formulations (up to 5 cP).
Home-careAdherence and remote monitoringA pocket-sized connected device: patients dose at home, clinicians follow every dose remotely.
MEMS precisionSemiconductor-grade manufacturingWafer-level fabrication for chip-to-chip consistency, dose accuracy and cost at scale.

Why now

Upgrading delivery for the upcoming boom in molecules.

AI is accelerating drug discovery and validation. A wave of new molecules and treatments is coming, for cancer, brain disorders, rare diseases and infectious diseases.

Yet how we administer them has not changed. Patients are given bulky, awkward devices and the last thing they want is to display their hardship. It's time to upgrade the way we administer drugs.

The problem

The lung is a convenient route.

Biologics are the fastest-growing class of medicine, and almost all are injected. Injectors are simply inconvenient: of 125,474 US adults newly prescribed a GLP-1, about half had discontinued within a year (Rodriguez 2025).

Why not a pill? Because the gut is built to digest proteins: the oral bioavailability of peptides is typically below 1–2% (Drucker 2020).

The lung is the obvious alternative, with a vascularized surface of 70–100 m², about half a tennis court. Existing dry powder inhalers and nebulizers struggle to aerosolize fragile, high-dose biologics without damaging them. That is not a verdict on inhalation; it's a product and market brief for the band of biologics we want to serve.

Get in touch

Self-funded to here. Now we raise.

The deck and the technical brief are available on request.

Contact us