Dr. Conor Ruzycki, an Aerosol Engineer here at Lovelace Biomedical, has recently published his article titled: Characterization of Dry Powder Inhaler Performance through Experimental Methods, where he discusses various platforms that dry powder inhalers (DPIs) are capable of delivering powder formulations of inhaled therapeutics. In his article, Dr. Conor Ruzycki outlines the focus of the developments in treating not only pulmonary issues, but also other general diseases—and the effectiveness of DPIs in vitro-in vivo experiments. Any further developments for future devices and formulations—from the first idea to availability in the market—would benefit from the aid of these advanced experimental methods in strengthening in vitro-in vivo correlations. All of this can be achieved with traditional compendial methods.
These compendial methods used to test DPIs have been shown to generate inconsistencies in various vital metrics such as the rate of increase of flow rate through DPIs, as well as differences in typical in vivo values. These variabilities often complicate the interpretation and understanding of how patients’ use of DPIs is performing and affecting them overall. These estimations of the variabilities in the given population are challenging, but they will benefit from future deposition studies.
While testing DPIs, Dr. Conor Ruzycki explains that achieving optimal characterizations of extrathoracic and thoracic dosing is possible using advanced experimental methods. These methods utilize mouth-throat models, physiologically-relevant inhalation profiles, and evolving methods for characterizing regional lung deposition. One such approach to regional thoracic deposition of DPIs is aided through recently developed filters that are used to replicate tracheobronchial deposition. Also reviewed during the experiments was the timing of bolus delivery, the influence of environmental conditions, as well as the development of electrostatic charge on aerosolized DPI powders.
Concluded is that while challenges remain in the estimation of deposition variabilities for DPIs, earlier generations of DPIs and their experimentation allows for the engineering of newer devices and formulations that largely bypass extrathoracic depositions and maximize the dosage delivered to the lungs.
We want to congratulate Dr. Conor Ruzycki for his stellar work and experimentation on the topic and characterization of dry powder inhaler performance and deposition. We encourage you to read his latest article and we look forward to sharing our upcoming research and findings with you. You can find Dr. Conor Ruzycki’s latest article here.