Delivery of High Drug Doses to and via the Respiratory Tract with Dry Powder Inhalers Anne Haaije de Boer Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmacy University of Groningen (RUG) Email: A.H.de:Boer@rug.nl
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Biography Anne Haaije de Boer is a process engineer. He started working for the University of Groningen in 1973 in the field of tabletting. In 1985 he became the research leader of the inhalation group of the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmacy. He developed air classifier technology for inhalation which finds application in the marketed NovolizerÒ (Meda) and newly developed GenuairÒ (Almirall-Sofotec) multi-dose dry powder inhalers and a disposable high-dose dry powder inhaler (TwincerTM) for antibiotics (in CF and TB therapy), vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals. His main personal interests are understanding the mechanisms involved in the interparticulate interactions in powder mixtures for inhalation, drug deposition and distribution in the respiratory tract and methods of aerosol characterisation. Company Profile The Groningen University (1614) has 25.000 students and 5.000 employees spread over 10 faculties. The Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmacy is part of the Groningen Centre for Drug Research (GCDR) within the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the Faculty of Medical Sciences. The department has three main research areas: inhalation, sugar glass technology and tabletting. The inhalation group has collaborations with different external academic groups, hospitals and industrial partners for various projects and PhD-studies.
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Abstract Most classic inhaled anti asthma and COPD drugs are given in the microgram range. There is a growing interest in treating respiratory infections like TB and influenza directly through and in the lungs. And in the past decade, the pulmonary route has also been discovered for systemically acting drugs like insulin. Many of the antibiotics and biopharmaceuticals involved are given in much higher doses than those against asthma and COPD. Wet nebulisation has long been the preferred administration technique for such biopharmaceuticals and antibiotics (e.g. in CF therapy), but poor drug stability and inadequate patient compliance have increased the interest in powder inhalation. Some of the larger molecules require stabilisation in the dry state and/or special particle engineering processes (e.g. spray-freeze drying) to obtain well dispersible powders. Such formulations may include large quantities of excipients and have large volumes due to their low porosity. Most of these formulations are also highly hygroscopic. Pros and cons of some high dose inhalers will be reviewed in the presentation, including the Pfizer Exubera device and formulation for inhaled insulin, the modified Turbospin for Tobramycin Inhalation Powder (TIP: Novartis) and RUG’s disposable Twincer which has successfully been tested (in vivo and in vitro) for a number of different high dose drugs.
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