Analysis of improved oral drug delivery with different helical stream inhalation modes.

A challenging aspect of pulmonary drug delivery devices, e.g., metered dose inhalers (MDIs), is to deliver therapeutic drugs to prescribed target locations at the required dosage level.

Improving Pulmonary Nanotherapeutics Using Helical Aerosol Streams: An In Silico Study.

The increasing prevalence of pulmonary ailments including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, lung tuberculosis, and lung cancer, coupled with the success of pulmonary therapy, has led to a plethora of scientific research focusing on improving the efficacy of pulmonary drug delivery systems. Recent advances in nanoscience and nano-engineering help achieve this by developing stable, potent, inhalable nanosize drug formulations that potentially increase dosages at target sites with significant therapeutic effects. In this study, we numerically analyze a novel methodology of incorporating helical air-nanoparticle streams for pulmonary nanotherapeutics, using a customized version of the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) toolbox openfoam.

Comparison of micron- and nano-particle transport in the human nasal cavity with a focus on the olfactory region.

Intranasal administration of drugs serves as a promising, noninvasive option for the treatment of various disorders of the central nervous system and upper respiratory tract. Predictive, ie, realistic and accurate, particle tracking in the human nasal cavities is an essential step to achieve these goals. The major factors affecting aerosol transport and deposition are the inhalation flowrate, the particle characteristics, and the nasal airway geometry.

Modeling Airflow and Particle Deposition in a Human Acinar Region.

The alveolar region, encompassing millions of alveoli, is the most vital part of the lung. However, airflow behavior and particle deposition in that region are not fully understood because of the complex geometrical structure and intricate wall movement. Although recent investigations using 3D computer simulations have provided some valuable information, a realistic analysis of the air-particle dynamics in the acinar region is still lacking.

Mice-to-men comparison of inhaled drug-aerosol deposition and clearance.

Part of the effective prediction of the pharmacokinetics of drugs (or toxic particles) requires extrapolation of experimental data sets from animal studies to humans. As the respiratory tracts of rodents and humans are anatomically very different, there is a need to study airflow and drug-aerosol deposition patterns in lung airways of these laboratory animals and compare them to those of human lungs. As a first step, interspecies computational comparison modeling of inhaled nano-to-micron size drugs (50 nm < d<15μm) was performed using mouse and human upper airway models under realistic breathing conditions.