Inhaled New Drug Delivery for Lung Disease Patients is Revealed in Video by Pulmatrix

Daniela Semedo, PhD avatar

by Daniela Semedo, PhD |

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Pulmatrix recently released an educational, animated video to raise awareness of problematic complex lung diseases and to describe encouraging new dry treatment options for patients with lung conditions including cystic fibrosis (CF).

The video can be watched here: [ir.pulmatrix.com] It begins “Everyday you take over 20,000 breaths. Imagine if everyone of those breaths was a struggle . . ”

“Millions of people struggle to breathe every day because of such diseases as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF),” said Pulmatrix CEO Robert Clarke in a press release. “For them, the struggle for breath is a struggle for life.”

Treating lung diseases usually involves inhaling drugs into the lungs. But, as described in the video, there are serious limitations in most currently available inhaled drug agents. Large quantities of the drugs never make it into the lung, because they get stuck in the throat which reduces treatment effectiveness and causing additional adverse side effects.

The video animation describes how Pulmatrix faced the problem by engineering a dry particle dispersal system that carries the drugs deep into the lungs.

Pulmatrix’s iSPERSE (inhaled Small Particles Easily Respirable and Emitted) is a new platform owned by Pulmatrix for inhaled drug delivery based on a combination of properties: density, high drug load, engineered particles with highly efficient dispersibility, dose reproducibility, flow-rate independence, and delivery to the airways.

“Our delivery system, which we call iSPERSE, has several potential advantages over most current approaches,” said the company’s Chief Scientific Officer David Hava. “We believe that our delivery efficiency should allow patients who have trouble breathing to inhale the needed drugs into their lungs, with almost no deposition in the throat. We believe that the system should also be able to reliably deliver high doses, and be used with many types of drugs.”

The video animation shows how the shape and size of Pulmatrix’s drug particles assist delivery past the throat and deep into the lungs.

Also described is Pulmatrix’s proprietary product pipeline focused on advancing treatments for rare and serious lung diseases:  PUR1900, the first inhaled anti-fungal for patients with CF and other conditions when lung fungal infections usually occur; a new bronchodilator called PUR0200, designed to help patients with COPD to breathe easier; and PUR1500, currently in development to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

“Better drug delivery means better patient outcomes,” said Clarke. “Our inhaled therapies should help patients breathe easier and improve their quality of life.”