InhaLac® 145 – The interview

MEGGLE announced the release of its new lactose product InhaLac® 145 yesterday.

Pharma Excipients had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Constanze Müller, Manager Business Development Inhalation and one of the persons behind the development of InhaLac® 145 to get more background information on the idea behind the new product and the important product features. See our short interview below.

PE: Welcome Dr. Constanze Müller from MEGGLE. Yesterday your company launched InhaLac® 145  as a new lactose product. We are very interested in the background of this launch. Therefore we are very happy to have you as Manager Business Development Inhalation with us for this interview.

Dr. Constanze Müller: It´s my pleasure to speak with you about InhaLac® 145 .

PE:  So let´s start. What was your motivation to develop another InhaLac®?

Dr. Constanze Müller: I need to expand on this very briefly. As you may know, we have application labs around the world where we offer services for our customers, and where we also generate our own application data. We have been testing how we can best mimic Spiriva’s particle size distribution (PSD) with our products, as interestingly enough, although Spiriva’s patent has already expired in 2017, there are still very few generics on the international market. We have investigated to what extent the originator PSD can be mirrored with our grades. It turned out that although we already have a very large portfolio, there is a gap between InhaLac® 140 and InhaLac® 150.

It turned out that although we already have a very large portfolio, there is a gap between
InhaLac® 140 and InhaLac® 150.
Therefore we decided to close that gap and developed our latest product InhaLac® 145.

PE: You say InhaLac® 145 is in-between InhaLac® 140 and InhaLac® 150

Dr. Constanze Müller: Yes, it is another milled product that has the same excellent characteristics as our other products, but closes the PSD gap between InhaLac® 140 and InhaLac® 145. This enables our customers to be more flexible and to realize any kind of DPI formulations.

The mean particle size of InhaLac® 145 is 35 µm with a x10 of 1-6 µm,
x50 20-50 µm and x90 of 65-140 µm.

PE: Are all your inhalative lactose milled?

Dr. Constanze Müller: No, we offer sieved, milled and micronized lactose for inhalation. It is important to have a broad portfolio in terms of PSD for inhalation. The PSD is one of the main parameters which determines the later success of the formulation. Of course it needs to harmonize also with the device. Therefore, we have coarser and finer sieved grades as well as milled types and FINES. The sieved and milled qualities are attributed by different characteristics. Each formulation is special and may be influenced by different parameters, that’s also why we pay that much attention on good application data.

PE: Yet, I understand that your portfolio is already quite extensive. Nevertheless, there will also be cases where customers need customized products. What is your approach when customers have special requirements?

Dr. Constanze Müller: We at MEGGLE pay great attention to customer support in order to understand the needs of our customers. For this it is also very important to have a well-trained sales team. Of course, our colleagues first and foremost provide advice with the existing portfolio, which, as you have already mentioned, is very well positioned. However, if a customer requires a very specific product, e.g. with regard to PSD distribution, then we also offer customized solutions. This is where our experienced product development team comes into play. Together with the customer, they define the relevant product characteristics and evaluate the technical feasibility. If both parties agree, the product development follows our established stage gate model.

PE: Thank you very much for this interview and the chance to get more background information on InhaLac® 145.

Dr. Constanze Müller: It was a pleasure.

See the product flyer for InhaLac® 145: