May has been a busy month for the RespiTech team at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

The OzNose Project was launched, a series of open-source research programs and consortia focussed on the upper-respiratory tract. The founding team consists of academics from a wide range of disciplines including engineering, physiology, clinical practice, molecular pharmacology and drug delivery. With the announcement, a new website 'www.oz-nose.org' was set up to provide a platform for the consortia to report findings to the public and scientific community and serve as a research hub for its members.

Away from the Institute, members of the RespiTech group (Mehra, Yang, John, Dany and Paul) attended RDD Europe in Berlin. The premier drug delivery conference had over 450 attendees and a series of papers by the group were well received. Mehra gave a podium presentation on epithelial uptake of combination products and continued-on to give invited presentations in the areas of drug delivery and cell biology to Paolo Colombo's group at the University of Parma and Claus Muir's group at the University of Saarbrücken. Mehra will work with the team to establish new collaborations and strengthen existing projects between these centres. Also overseas, Jess left for the UK to visit Simon Gaisford's group at UCL. Jess received an Endeavour award to spend 6 months studying particle stability in pressurised metered dose inhalers.

At home, YY received a prestigious fellowship from the European Respiratory Society to undertake a research program with Joy Conway's group at the University of Southampton (UK). She will spend 2014 in the UK working alongside Joys' group to study mucociliary clearance using lung imaging and develop new approaches to treating CF and COPD.

The group have published three articles this month in the areas of respiratory cell biology and clinical management. Firstly, YY published a review in 'Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery', focusing on the application of the Calu-3 cell model for drug delivery studies, while Mehra authored an article in 'Respirology' using the Calu-3 model to study mediated cellular uptake of fluticasone when delivered in combination with Salmeterol. At the patient interface, Sharon authored an article in the 'Australian Journal of Primary Health' reporting asthma management practices in developmental disability clinics; giving advice to healthcare professions with respect to inhaler use and training.

As always we welcome new members to our team. Michele Pozzoli starts with us as PhD student. Michele is supervised by Fabio Sonvico, Mary Bebawy (both UTS), Paul and Dany and will focus on drug delivery to the upper respiratory tract (one of the first projects as part of the OzNose initiative). Welcome Michele!

Respiratory Technology celebrates its fourth month since establishment at the WIMR. 

April has been a short month for the group, with members of the Respiratory Technology team attending the International Society of Aerosol Medicine conference in North Carolina, followed by meetings with collaborative partners on the East Coast of the US. At home, members of the team who supported the WIMRs Student Research Symposia. 80 people attended this years meeting and Dr Mehra Haghi gave a plenary lecture. Yang gave a postgrad talk and Jess and John had posters which attracted significant attention by other attendees, congratulations to all!

Two papers from an international university-industry consortia were published for which we have received amazing feedback and support from the local pharmaceutics and inhalation community; many thanks for all who commented on our media feeds! It was also announced this month that Respiratory Technology and the WIMR have supported the Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society by offering to host the 2013 Drug Delivery Australia Conference in Sydney on the 24 and 25 of October (See www.crsaustralia.org and www.facebook.com/DrugDeliveryAustralia for further details). 

This month has also seen the appointment of YY and Eric as postdoctorate researchers within the WIMR. YY's research will focus on understanding the mechanisms underpinning drug interactions at a cellular level, with a view to treat chronic infection and hypermucosal secretion at the epithelia, while Eric will focus on the dynamics of particle production in combination inhalation systems. We welcome both! Additionally the group would like to introduce and welcome two new research students, Ningyi Xu and Giula Ballerin. Ningyi is undertaking a project looking at the dynamics of pMDI aerosol droplet formation and will be co supervised by Eric, while Giulia, co-supervised by YY, is studying new approaches to enhance clearance of mucus in patients with COPD and Cystic Fibrosis. 

The month ahead; May looks to be an interesting month with the launch of a new group-initiative and the ramp-up of a new area of research (watch this space…). Additionally, members of the team will be attending Respiratory Drug Delivery in Berlin towards the end of the month. See you there…