Advancement of a High-Dose Infant Air-Jet Dry Powder Inhaler (DPI) with Passive Cyclic Loading: Performance Tuning for Different Formulations

There is a current medical need for a dry powder aerosol delivery device that can be used to efficiently and consistently administer high dose therapeutics, such as inhaled antibiotics, surfactants and antivirals, to the lungs of infants. This study considered an infant air-jet dry powder inhaler (DPI) that could be actuated multiple times with minimal user interaction (i.e., a passive cyclic loading strategy) and focused on the development of a metering system that could be tuned for individual powder formulations to maintain high efficiency lung delivery. The metering system consisted of a powder delivery tube (PDT) connecting a powder reservoir with an aerosolization chamber and a powder supporting shelf that held a defined formulation volume.

Results indicated that the metering system could administer a consistent dose/actuation after reaching a steady state condition. Modifications of the PDT diameter and shelf volume provided a controllable approach that could be tuned to maximize lung delivery efficiency for three different formulations. Using optimized metering system conditions for each formulation, the infant air-jet DPI was found to provide efficient and consistent lung delivery of aerosols (∼45% of loaded dose) based on in vitro testing with a preterm nose-throat model and limited dose/actuation to <5 mg.

Read more here

Materials

Albuterol sulfate (AS) and l-leucine were purchased from Sigma Chemical Co. (St. Louis, MO). Pearlitol® PF-Mannitol was donated from Roquette Pharma (Lestrem, France) and Poloxamer 188 (Leutrol F68) was donated from BASF Corporation (Florham Park, NJ). Trileucine was purchased from Bachem Americas, Inc. (Torrance, CA). Sodium chloride, ethanol and methanol were purchased from Fisher Scientific Co. (Hanover Park, IL).

Connor Howe, Mohammad A.M. Momin, Ghali Aladwani, Sarah Strickler, Michael Hindle, Worth Longest, Advancement of a High-Dose Infant Air-Jet Dry Powder Inhaler (DPI) with Passive Cyclic Loading: Performance Tuning for Different Formulations, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 2023, 123199, ISSN 0378-5173, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2023.123199.

Watch our free webinar “Spray Drying” here: