Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) goes from strength to strength – now in its 22nd year hosting almost 500 delegates at the EICC in Edinburgh, having long since outgrown its origins in the Church House in Westminster, London.
DDL has always had a strong focus on the technical side of respiratory drug delivery – with numerous poster presentations pushing the collective knowledge of the underlying science. And it continues to do so, with a wide variety of presentations covering everything from patient needs, formulation, device engineering and the physics of aerosolising fine powders.
Professor Peter Barnes from Imperial College London presented the opening DDL lecture with a though-provoking talk in which he called for the development of new COPD drugs with a smaller MMAD (Mass Median Aerodynamic Diameter) in order to target the deep lung. The rest of day one centred around ‘Disease states beyond Asthma and COPD’, and included presentations on the treatment of lung cancer, migraine relief and tuberculosis from device and pharma companies, and academic research groups.
Vectura sponsored the evening drinks reception and entertainment, which encouraged visitors to the main exhibition hall, where they could eat, drink and network, and enter various competitions to win Kindles, iPads and numerous bottles of single malt. For the first time this year, the DDL organising committee ran a quiz with an iPad as the main prize – many of the answers required knowledge only available in the exhibition hall – a cunning plan that certainly seemed to do the trick!
Our own stand was very busy, with many people up for the challenge of inspiratory ‘weight lifting’, using our purposely designed Inhalator apparatus – with two Kindles on offer as prizes to the man and woman with the highest inspiratory muscle strength. Frank Koppenhagen of Teva held the lead at the end of the first day, with a staggering lift of 5.77 kg, which was all of the weights we had available at the time!
Day two began with several presentations on ‘optimising inhalers’, including some thought-provoking science about the underlying physics of deagglomeration / aerosolisation by James Tibbatts (Concept Flow). This led onto a new format with presentations given from device ‘champions’ representing the patient, pMDIs, nebulisers and DPIs, followed by half an hour of questioning from the audience. I was invited to be the DPI champion and presented its case.
The afternoon hosted poster presentations from candidates for the Pat Burnell New Investigator Award, which was won by Eva Littringer (Research Center of Pharmaceutical Engineering) for her research into the effect of carrier shape and roughness on fine particle fraction.
Despite hurricane force winds during Thursday, attendees arrived bright and early on Friday for the final sessions – the physio chemical properties of drugs, and ‘What on Earth’ – in which the audience enjoyed learning about Liquidia Technologies’ process for printing inhalable particles – precisely controlling their size and shape. Frank duly defended his title on the Inhalator, fending off efforts from Douglas Bradshaw (TTP), Mark Hammond (Melbourn Scientific) and David Morton (Monash University). He was still able to comfortably raise 6.27 kg (we found some more weights) – demonstrating a whopping 30+ Joules of inspiratory energy. Eva Littringer, who won the Pat Burnell award the previous day, topped the ladies’ leaderboard, with a lift of 4.27 kg, half a kilo more than her closest competitor, Georgina Fradley (3M). Both Frank and Eva took home the latest Kindle eReaders.
Another year and another fantastic event – our thanks go to the organising committee and the attendees who published, presented and came along to make it all happen.
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