On the final day of the meeting, Ralph Niven of Novartis presented a talk titled, “The Roller Coaster that is Aerosolized Biomolecules. What’s the Next Wild Ride?” noting that while few biomolecules are currently in clinical development for inhalation, he expects to see more advancing out of pre-clinical development soon, though he also warns that there must be a real and specific justification for development of an inhaled biological beyond convenience when an injectable product is cheaper and easier to develop.
One of the presenters calling for more customer-driven products was Anne Haaije de Boer, who began the annual DDL lecture, titled “Factors Affecting DPI Development – from Bench to Bedside,” with a declaration that he wished to be “a little provocative.” De Boer, who co-developed the Novolizer and Twincer inhalers, then called for the elimination of unnecessary excipients — by which he meant all excipients, including lactose — and the use of hard capsules for dry powder delivery. DPI designers, he said, should take the cognitive and motor skills of various patient groups into account and should do their best to make devices patient-independent and easy to use.
Bruce Rubin,Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University, opened Day 2 of the meeting with the plenary lecture, titled “Aerosol Therapies for Cystic Fibrosis:The Present, the Promise, the Potential, the Problems” in which he offered an overview of CF treatments ranging from antibiotics to mucoactive drugs to gene therapy, with pros and cons of each type.
As he did during his plenary lecture at RDD Europe 2015, Rubin pointed to the issue of adherence. Among the factors he emphasized for the development of future therapies for CF is the need to reduce the treatment burden for patients, not only through faster delivery of individual drugs but also perhaps by creating combination drugs to simplify therapy regimens.
In another presentation concerned with patient-focused development, Mac Tuncer from the BREATHE Initiative and members of 3 of the 30 teams that participated described the collaborative process and outcomes from the BREATHE Respiratory Hackathons, which took place on September 19th and 20th, 2015 in Boston, London, and Tel Aviv. Over the course of the weekend, patients, engineers, designers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs teamed up to “hack” devices for COPD prevention and treatment.
Winning ideas included a COPD breath simulator and board game designed to educate children about COPD in hopes that they would push their grandparents to be tested, a home test kit including a “puffometer” device, and a Bluetooth pendant to monitor respiratory rate, cough, heart rate, and other symptoms in order to predict and prevent exacerbations.
