SPIRITUS: (10-15) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR

This is our October 2015 update of news from the RespiTech group at the WIMR. This month, members of the group attended the 3rd International Meeting on Inhaled Therapeutics for Tuberculosis and Infectious Diseases in Parma, Italy where Daniela gave a plenary on high dose therapies using the Orbital DPI and Paul was Rapporteur for a session on pulmonary pharmacokinetics. 

Back at home, the group held a social outing to a Persian Restaurant on the North shore to celebrate some new arrivals to the group and departure of old members. Firstly we would like to Welcome Sjoerd Zonings, Finbar Cannery and Dr Rafael Villalobos García. Sjoerd is a visiting student from Avans University in the Netherlands who is working on the use of a new excipient to reduce electrostatics in dry powders. Fin is a visiting student from Bath who is working on a project focussed on understanding how cellular tight junctions are modified by inhaled therapeutics. Rafael is a long-term collaborator with the group and is visiting Sydney on sabbatical from the Facultad de Estudios Superiores in Mexico. Rafael is an expert in computational simulation of complex mixtures and is using Montecarlo simulations to predict the release profile of drug from controlled release formulations that can target the lung. Welcome all! We are also sad to say farewell to Anita Vandyke who was working with us on a project focused on studying the impact of pMDI formulation parameters on aerosol force. Anita is off to pursue a higher degree in medicine. Well done Anita!

As always, we give an update on publications by the group. This month, 2 publications were accepted in peer reviewed Journals. The first was an article by Sharon Davis entitled “Knowledge that people with intellectual disability have of their inhaled asthma medications-messages for pharmacists” to be published in the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy. The second was an article by Sumit Arora entitled “highly Respirable Dry Powder Inhalable Formulation of Voriconazole with Enhanced Pulmonary Bioavailability” accepted in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. The details of both articles along with all our Journal publications can be found on the publication page of our website.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate members of the team for significant achievements. Congratulations go to Alaa Tulbah who submitted her Thesis for review. Alaa has spent the past three years undertaking a PhD studying the formulation and impact of simvastatin on treating chronic lung diseases. Finally, congratulations to Sharon Davis who received the award letter for her PhD on intellectual disability and inhaler use. Congratulation Dr Davis and well done all!