The 7th session of the symposium focuses on pharmaceutical sciences, with a particular focus on pulmonary inhalation therapies.
With us Dr. Massimo Pedrani, a long career in pharmaceutical sciences and particularly expert in drug delivery systems.
The session focuses on the production of therapies for diseases of the lung tract, a process characterized by several technological difficulties. The multidisciplinary approach to the development of this type of “delivery system” is very important because there is a real need for the expertise of different professionals, from formulation to production to quality control, and then to the clinical research phases during which the real effectiveness of the drug is evaluated.
A great criticality in the production of inhalation dusts, explains dr. Pedrani, meets in the preclinical research phase, as the transition from in vitro tests on cell lines to in vivo tests on animals is very complicated.
A further difficulty that occurs, unfortunately, in the administration of these therapies to patients is the difficulty of inhaling the product, precisely because breathing is compromised by the disease. Each disease of the respiratory tract, whether it is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma, has a different effect on the patient’s inhalation possibilities, there is no single way to develop the drug. The most difficult part is the translation from a cell/animal model to a human model, because the behavior and the result changes a lot.
Special attention always goes to the health of our planet, which can be damaged by the production of this type of powder-based medicine. In particular, the focus is not so much on the active ingredient, which follows the European directives for its production, as on the medical device that is used and the substance that serves as a propellant for the leakage of the drug and its inhalation.
