Approximately 400 OINDP experts gathered in Orlando, FL, USA May 1-May 5 for the first in-person Respiratory Drug Delivery meeting since 2019, with another 75 attending virtually. RDD Online’s Richard Dalby welcomed delegates from 28 countries to the meeting in a full ballroom at the Omni Championsgate. Throughout the meeting, delegates expressed how happy they were to meet again in person and to be able to interact freely.
As at recent meetings, sustainability was a key issue, with one of the meeting’s “knowledge spaces” dedicated to the topic (“Project Green MDI”). The other knowledge spaces were “Focus on Therapeutics,” “Aqueous Advances,” “Spotlight Nasal,” “Designing DPIs – Perfecting Powders,” and “Regulatory, Science & Technology Innovation.” Recordings of the sessions are now available to delegates on the RDD 2022 web site and will remain available through June 30, 2022.
Right from the start, beginning at the welcome reception the previous evening, the vast majority of delegates seemed unconcerned about COVID, with few wearing masks or keeping any distance from others. Organizers had expected more reluctance on the part of attendees to take risks and included RDD logo face masks in the welcome package and offered color-coded lanyards to allow delegates to signal their willingness or reticence to shake hands or stand close to others, with red lanyards indicating “stay away”; yellow for “elbow bump instead of shake hands”; and green for “willing to shake hands, hug, etc.” However, they ran out of green lanyards and began giving out black ones when few attendees proved willing to wear yellow or red lanyards.
Awards
To kick off RDD 2022, Mike Hindle of Virginia Commonwealth University first presented the Charles G. Thiel award to the 2020 winner, Jeff Weers of Cystetic Medicines. Because the 2020 RDD meeting took place virtually, and the 2021 meeting also took place online only, this was the first opportunity for Weers to accept the award in person.
Next, Hindle presented the 2022 Charles G. Thiel award to Günther Hochhaus of the University of Florida. According to Hindle, Hochhaus was nominated for the award by the FDA, which noted that he was “instrumental for building and expanding the scientific understanding on nasal and oral inhalation product performance, impacting both brand name and generic drug development.”
Later on the first day, following the Posters on the Podium session, the VCU RDD Peter R. Byron Graduate Student Award was presented to Nicholas Bungert from Kiel University for his poster, “Factors Affecting the Performance of Lactose Carriers During Long-Term Storage.”
Project Green MDI
The scientific portion of the meeting opened with a plenary lecture by John Pritchard of Inspiring Strategies who asked, “Is the Climate Right for a New pMDI Propellant?” Pritchard, the 2018 Charles G. Thiel award winner and a member of a United Nations advisory committee on ozone-depleting substances, reviewed the current propellant situation, acknowledging that MDIs represent a very small percentage of greenhouse gases and that poor control of respiratory conditions has a greater environmental impact than MDI propellants, but suggesting that a transition has become inevitable due to legislative, public, and economic pressure with 2025 as a probable tipping point.
