November 2024
The last 6 months have been busy and very productive as we continue the development of a dry powder aerosol product for the treatment of neonates with respiratory distress syndrome.
The full video link below shows how we are able to load and deliver 30 mg of formulation in ~ 1 minute using our hand actuator driven dry powder inhaler. We can aerosolize 30mg of surfactant dry powder formulation using 4 actuations of 10 ml volume at a flow rate of 3 L/min, suitable for direct administration to neonates.
VCU Surfactant Dry Powder Aerosol Delivery
Our first two papers describing the formulation development and initial proof of concept in vivo studies have been published in Pharmaceutical Research and are available here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11095-024-03740-z
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11095-024-03754-7
Our PharmD students and post docs presented their work at the VCU School of Pharmacy Research Day and congratulations to Caleb Dalton who was joint winner of the Best Post Doc Poster Award. Anh Truong, Belinda Vu and Sara Arnaout presented their elective and summer research fellowship posters at the meeting. Their work has provided new insights into the effects of relative humidity on our powder formulations. Our PharmD students are also presenting their research at national meetings, Jheanelle Atkinson presented her poster at the Student National Pharmacy Association (SNPHA)/National Pharmacy Association (NPhA) National Convention in Los Angeles, CA this summer. And Sara Arnaout will present her poster at the ASHP Midyear 2024 Conference in New Orleans, LA in December.
It has also been a busy season for conferences with the group attending RDD 2024 in Tucson, AZ, Exploring the Future of Inhalation Drug Delivery, Parma, Italy, AAPS PharmSci360, Salt Lake City, Utah, RDD Asia, Kerala, India and DDL 2024, Edinburgh, Scotland.
RDD 2024 was a great meeting where we presented our latest work and hosted a dinner for current and former VCU students and postdocs. The Exploring the Future of Inhalation Drug Delivery conference had an outstanding programme and was perfectly organized by Dr. Francesca Buttini and her team. The AAPS PharmSci 360 annual meeting continues to be a great forum to reach beyond the inhalation world and catch up on the latest pharmaceutical science. Mohammad Momin’s poster was selected for one of the Best Abstract Awards and also took part in a presentation in the Special Poster Collection Selection. Mohammad will also be presenting later in the month at RDD Asia, where he will give a podium presentatio on our small animal DPI. Finally, Dr. Hindle is looking forward to attending DDL 2024 in Edinburgh where he was invited to give the DDL Annual Lecture.
RDD 2024
VCU and Kindeva were delighted to recognize the RDD 2024 Charles G. Thiel Award winner, John Patton. In the words of his nominators: John’s knowledge and experience are imparted in the gentlest of ways, but despite his standing in the field, he is always willing to learn new things. John is a heck of person to boot!
The 2024 VCU RDD Peter R. Byron Graduate Student Award was presented by Dr. Peter Byron to Kinnari Arte, a PhD student at Purdue University, for her poster submission entitled “Impact of L-leucine on Stability and Aerosol Performance of Dry Powder Protein Formulations”.
Parma 2024
AAPS 2024
Finally, it was very special to receive hand drawn thank you cards with all our favourite inhalers and lab equipment. We have an artist amoung us (Anh !).
Our progress over the last year is mindblowing, our VCUPharmacy and VCUEngineering team are well on the way to developing a powder aerosol treatment of infants with RDS. We have some great PharmD students working in the lab this year Anh Truong, Sara Arnaout, Jheanelle Atkinson and Belinda Vu. Thanks for everyones hard work.. Mohammad Momin, Dale Farkas, Caleb Dalton, Felicia Hall, Ghali Aladwani, Sarah Strickler, Hasan Jubaer, Arun Varghese Kolanjiyil, Rabijit Dutta, Morgan Thomas, Casey Grey. All would not be possible without outstanding and giving collaborators, Worth Longest, Laleh Golshahi, Qingguo Xu, Rebecca Heise and Rob DiBlasi.