Pulmonary drug delivery has emerged as a noninvasive alternative route for the treatment of lung diseases (asthma, COPD, CF and lung cancer). In order to obtain the desired level of effectiveness and safety of the inhaled drugs, an appropriate deposition on the targeted region and subsequent absorption in the targeted region is vital. Multiscale multidisciplinary computational tools, linking Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), particle/species transport and PBPK-PD models, were developed during the Phase I effort for obtaining mechano-biological insights and quantifying the efficacy of the delivery processes. Preliminary results demonstrated the validity and capabilities of this multiscale multidisciplinary computational concept. In Phase II, we will (i) extend the existing particle transport models for handling varied drug sizes, (ii) further develop the deposition formulations for the Reduced Order Models (ROM) for faster than life simulations, (iii) incorporate the airway wall biomechanics model for accurately capturing the dynamics of lumen diameter change, smooth muscle force, particle transport/deposition in healthy and diseased lung states (global or local, levels of progression), (iv) extend and validate the mucosal transport/clearance models on ROM wire meshes to characterize the effects of healthy and diseased states on drug clearance and absorption in the lung tissue, (v) calibrate the models for matching clinical PBPK data for various drugs and administration protocols and (vi) significantly improve the existing GUI for lung geometry alteration (support diseased states) and for the whole-body PBPK. The above aims will hasten the development of pulmonary drugs by carefully identifying key mechanical and biopharmaceutical factors affecting efficacy and safety of inhaled drugs using fast and robust computational simulations. A multistep simulation protocol for modeling drug inhalation delivery, deposition, absorption and PBPK/PD will be established. High fidelity tools will be targeted for pharma expert users and automated fast running reduced order models for pharma end users. The proposed computational toolkit will thus provide a virtual platform to investigate interactions between drug delivery methods, drug/carrier types and the human physiological systems at multiple scales and ultimately optimize the efficacy of pulmonary drug delivery process

Public Health Relevance

The novel software tool proposed in this project will provide an efficient and accurate computational platform to virtually test, design, develop and optimize nasally/orally inhaled drug products by investigating interactions between delivery methods, generic/specific drug/carrier types and the human physiological systems at multiple scales. This computational toolkit will hasten the drug discovery process by identifying key mechano-biological factors affecting the efficacy and the safety of inhaled drugs using fast and robust simulations. This will aid the pharma experts, the end users and the pharmaceutical industry by facilitating translational applications from bench to bedside, by obtaining new insights into the drug interaction at various scales, by enhancing success rates of new and existing pulmonary drug products and by ultimately helping reduce health care burdens on society.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Small Business Innovation Research Grants (SBIR) - Phase II (R44)
Project #
2R44GM108380-02
Application #
9140317
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1)
Program Officer
Cole, Alison E
Project Start
2013-09-01
Project End
2018-06-30
Budget Start
2016-07-15
Budget End
2017-06-30
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2016
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Cfd Research Corporation
Department
Type
DUNS #
185169620
City
Huntsville
State
AL
Country
United States
Zip Code
35806
Kannan, Ravishekar; Chen, Z J; Singh, Narender et al. (2017) A quasi-3D wire approach to model pulmonary airflow in human airways. Int J Numer Method Biomed Eng 33:
Ravi Kannan, Ravishekar; Przekwas, A J; Singh, Narender et al. (2017) Pharmaceutical aerosols deposition patterns from a Dry Powder Inhaler: Euler Lagrangian prediction and validation. Med Eng Phys 42:35-47
Kannan, Ravishekar; Guo, Peng; Przekwas, Andrzej (2016) Particle transport in the human respiratory tract: formulation of a nodal inverse distance weighted Eulerian-Lagrangian transport and implementation of the Wind-Kessel algorithm for an oral delivery. Int J Numer Method Biomed Eng 32: