SPIRITUS: (11-15) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR

This is our November update and penultimate news letter from the RespiTech for 2015. This month, members of the group attended Drug Delivery Australia in Brisbane. Paul gave a presentation on innovations in drug delivery and Daniela on repurposing oral drug delivery molecules for inhalation. Lala, Michele, Alaa and Mariam had posters, while Mariam was selected for a posters on the podium presentation to highlight the clinical work she is conducting in Cystic Fibrosis Research.

As always, we congratulate people for their achievements and give an update on publications from the group. Firstly, YY was awarded a University Kick Starter grant. The Kickstarter grant, worth $30,000 will be used to develop ‘Innovative inhaled antibiotic treatment strategies for the eradication and prevention of persistent respiratory infections’. Also this month, Paul was appointed as the new incoming President of The Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society (AUS-CRS). AUS-CRS was established in 2007, with the aim of providing a forum for science and education for Australian scientists with an interest in delivery of bioactives. You can learn more about AUS-CRS here. Later in month, Daniela received $30,000 in a NHMRC near-miss funding towards a large multidisciplinary project that will evaluate repurposing a number of small molecules for lung diseases.

The RespiTech group published five peer reviewed papers this month. The first, an original research article by Sumit Arora in ‘Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery’ was titled ‘Highly Respirable Dry Powder Inhalable Formulation of Voriconazole with Enhanced Pulmonary Bioavailability’. This work focusses on respiratory fungal infection and inhalable antifungal treatment. The second paper by Sharon Davis, focused on health-care provision, was accepted in International ‘Journal of Clinical Pharmacy’. This article is titled ‘Knowledge that people with intellectual disability have of their inhaled asthma medications-messages for pharmacists’. Third, the group had a paper accepted with their collaborators at Monash University and Chiesi UK in ‘Pharmaceutical Research’. The paper (first author Daniel Duke) is titled ‘Temporally and spatially resolved x-ray fluorescence measurements of in-situ drug concentration in metered-dose inhaler sprays’ is based on a synchrotron study of the evolution of pMDI sprays. The fourth paper this month was a review article, authored by Maliheh Ghadiri looking at treatment options for Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The article accepted in the journal ‘Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy’ is titled ‘Cell-based therapies for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) disease’. Lastly, a paper authored by Judy Loo was accepted in the ‘Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry’ This study investigated the combination of silver ions and nano-particle flavonoids for reducing bacterial colonisation in respiratory infections. The paper is titled ‘Combination of Silver Nanoparticles and Curcumin Nanoparticles for Enhanced Anti-biofilm Activities’

Well done all!. To learn more about these and other publications from the Respiratory Technology group you can visit our publications page here.

Lastly, the group began to ramp up celebrations for the festive season. This began with the Melbourne Cup day celebrations in November. December will have more celebrations as well as a number of the group traveling overseas for meetings and conferences. You can learn more about these and other activities of the group via Facebook and Twitter.