Prof. Paolo Colombo, CEO of PlumeSTARS and Dr. Eride Quarta, Research Scientist of PlumeSTARS, attended the 5^th International TB Meeting “Inhaled therapies for tuberculosis and other infectious diseases” in Groningen (The Netherlands) from 25 to 27 August 2019.

Prof. Paolo Colombo, as chairman, opened the First Session on formulations and devices, saying that Integrating the tuberculosis systemic drug administration with targeted loco-regional treatment improves the therapy effectiveness. The congress proposal in this direction was to introduce the administration of anti-bacterial drugs by inhalation as an adjunct to systemic therapy. This strategy allows a direct attack to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, i.e., the disease responsible.

Pulmonary drug products, in particular the most technologically advanced dry powders inhalers, imply a demanding pharma-tech development, since numerous variables for controlling the deposition of drug particles are involved. Bronchial or alveolar regions are the targets of TB disease.

The powders for inhalation are essentially formulated by crushing drug particles by milling or by constructing ex novo microparticulate shapes. In general, in infective lung diseases, the products present a high amount of powder to inhale for dose administration. In addition, in TB, more than one drug has to be delivered at same time. This forces the device technologies for metering, aerosolization and deposition to be strongly innovative.

In summary, formulation and device for anti-TB dry powder inhalation products are not simple combination products. Their sophistication is essential to facing the interaction among product, patient and microbial target. Local concentration of antibiotics, retention time and compliance with daily dosing could also suggest compounding of prolonged release formulations, using colloidal particles and controlling dissolution rate using compatible safe polymers. Therefore, novel inhaled antibiotic formulations, such as dry powder for inhalation, are promising as problem solving drug composition.

Finally, also Dr. Eride Quarta,research scientist of PlumeStars and PhD student of Department of Food& Drug at Parma University, presented the research contribution“Microparticles embedding streptomycin sulfate and isoniazid albumin co-nanoparticles for dry powder inhalers”.