Research Projects
Our pharmaceutical aerosol development laboratories are located on the MCV campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. Our interdisciplinary group works in collaboration with Dr Worth Longest (Department of Mechanical Engineering) to combine computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and design engineering to produce novel pharmaceutical aerosol drug delivery systems.
- Some of our currently funded projects are:
- Development of Synthetic Lung Surfactant Formulations and Delivery Devices for Treating Infants with RDS in Low Resource Environments (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
- Preclinical development of a synthetic lung surfactant dry powder aerosol for hypoxemia or acute respiratory distress syndrome patients receiving different modes of ventilation support (NIH/NHLBI).
- Developing high efficiency dry powder inhalers for the delivery of tobramycin to pediatric cystic fibrosis patients (NIH/NICHD).
- Our groups have also focused on the development of innovative in silico and in vitro methods to assess the pulmonary deposition from commercial inhalers using realistic oropharyngeal models.
- Other projects are focused on nasal drug delivery and characterizing deposition and absorption nasal spray products using realistic airway models.