Inhalable vaccines and the fight against TB: DDL2017 highlights
It’s the largest, most important event in Europe’s pulmonary drug delivery calendar—this year there were more visitors, and research posters, than ever at the Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) Conference, Edinburgh, December 6-8. What were the highlights?
An estimated 800 inhalation researchers attended this year’s DDL, up from 720 last year. For ISAB’s team of four it was an eventful Conference with a busy stand, customer meetings and three research posters, including one co-authored with Hovione and one with King’s College London.
Maria Malmlöf, ISAB Lab Manager In Vitro Studies: “It was excellent to catch up with so many collaborators. There was a fascinating range of posters this year and inhalable vaccines and nasal distribution seemed to me to be hot topics. At this event I felt our aerosol and dissolution expertise and capabilities were better known and attracting more interest from a whole range of researchers.”
Mattias Nowenwik, ISAB Analytical Chemist: “So many of the presentations were of a really high quality. It was great to meet so many collaborators. And inhaled vaccines, particularly for the treatment of TB, seemed to be a hot topic globally.”
Inhaled vaccines: TB and ISAB
ISAB and PreciseInhale® are involved in ongoing research into a new preventative treatment for TB. In 2016 the research team at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine at the University of Linköping, headed by Associate Professor Maria Lerm, used PreciseInhale® as part of their research into a new preventative, epigenetic treatment for TB, based on trained not adaptive immunity.
An epigenetic treatment would essentially prevent TB by training tissue in the lung to fight the disease—independent of adaptive, genetic immunity. Whilst it is early days for epigenetic TB treatments, interest is intense. If successful, an inhaled epigenetic treatment would prevent not only TB, but the highly aggressive strains of multi-drug resistant TB that are springing up and spreading around Asia.
The posters
ISAB’s three posters showed research on PreciseInhale®’s pMDI capability, separation of coarse lactose particles and agglomerates and controlling air pressure in aerosol generation.
Poster 5, carried out with researchers from King’s College London, shows how PreciseInhale® tests and generates aerosols from commercial inhalers. Poster 20, co-authored by ISAB clients Hovione, shows how PreciseInhale® separates coarse particles and agglomerates early on when developing drugs, creating consistent aerosols and data. Poster 14 illustrates how PreciseInhale® controls the air pressure of the aerosol dose, meaning better control of particle size distribution.
