This is the May 2016 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

In May, members of the RespiTech group were awarded an Australian Research Council linkage grant. Daniela Traini and Paul Young were awarded the grant, worth $420,000, to develop innovative nanotechnologies that target biofilms. Biofilms occur everywhere in nature and act as a protective matrix for aggressive bacteria and fungus that can effect our health, food production, processing machinery and water quality. The Linkage grant is in partnership with Aradigm Corporation based out of San Fanscisco.

Also this month the group had a number of celebrations. These included the celebration of Maree Svolos birthday, dinner to celebrate Alaa’s PhD award and a group outing for an evening of Karaoke in the City.

As usual, the group give an update of publications. This month, members of the group published 5 research articles. The First titled ‘From Single Excipients to Dual Excipient Platforms in Dry Powder Inhaler Products’ was a review accepted in International Journal of Pharmaceutics. The paper was a collaborative effort of the old Bath crew with Jag Shur (first author) Rob Price (corresponding) Dave Lewis, Paul Young and Stephen Edge. The second paper titled 'Primary Air Liquid Interface Culture of Nasal Epithelium for Nasal Drug Delivery' was accepted in Molecular Pharmaceutics. The paper by YY (Hui Xin Ong), is the result of her collaborative research program with Prof Joy Conway and the University of Southampton. Also, this month in a third paper titled “Could simvastatin be considered as a potential therapy for chronic lung diseases?” was published. In this paper, Alaa Tulbah gives an expert opinion on the future of inhaled statin therapy. The fourth paper, accepted in Current Drug Delivery is the result of a collaboration between Prof Rafael Villalobos from the University of Mexico and the RespiTech team. The paper is titled 'Drug release from inert spherical matrix systems using Monte Carlo simulations'. Lastly, the team published a paper with David Lewis and the group at Chiesi’s UK innovation Centre. The paper titled 'Exploring the impact of sample flowrate on in vitro measurements of metered dose inhaler performance' was accepted in International Journal of Pharmaceutics.

SPIRITUS: (05-16) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR.