For the treat­ment of pul­monary dis­eases, count­less people all over the world rely on inhalers. A large part of them are dry powder inhalers (DPIs), where the active ingre­dient is pro­vided in a powder for­mu­la­tion. How­ever, it is a long road with numerous obsta­cles before the devices can actu­ally help patients. Powder devel­op­ment in par­tic­ular presents many challenges. 

“Phar­ma­ceu­tical com­pa­nies ben­efit from our decades of expe­ri­ence.”Olga Ura­zova,
Chief Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Officer 
at Ster­ling S.P.A.

The active ingre­dient, excip­ient, mixing process, filling process or the device itself – all these aspects, and espe­cially the inter­ac­tions between them, need to be well-bal­anced in order to make a for­mu­la­tion effec­tive and robust. 

“Our ser­vices cover all crit­ical steps involved in DPI devel­op­ment.”Xander van Leeuwen, 
Sales Director Inhalation 
at DFE Pharma

At the same time, phar­ma­ceu­tical com­pa­nies often out­source the indi­vidual devel­op­ment steps to other com­pa­nies. This is why dif­ferent par­ties are respon­sible for aspects such as devel­op­ment of the active ingre­dient, selec­tion of the excip­ient and the appro­priate dosing technology.

How­ever, their focus is often lim­ited to their spe­cific exper­tise in the overall project. Upstream or down­stream processes may only be par­tially taken into account and pos­sible reper­cus­sions may simply be con­doned. Failed devel­op­ment projects or sub­se­quent prob­lems during pro­duc­tion can be the result.

“With INTO, our focus is always on the inter­ac­tions between powder, filling process and inhaler.”Marco Laack­mann,
Director Inhala­tion Technology 
at Harro Höfliger

It is against this back­ground that INTO ­(Inhala­tion Together) was born. INTO is a strategic coop­er­a­tion between the active ingre­dient man­u­fac­turer Ster­ling S.P.A., the expert for excip­i­ents DFE Pharma and ­Harro Höfliger who is respon­sible for the appro­priate dosing tech­nology. Each of the com­pa­nies has decades of expe­ri­ence in the inhala­tion field. The alliance helps phar­ma­ceu­tical com­pa­nies to make for­mu­la­tion devel­op­ment for dry powder inhalers faster, safer and more efficient.

From the very first moment, INTO can see the entire devel­op­ment tra­jec­tory, from the active ingre­dient par­ticle to the filling line. The spe­cial­ists know where the obsta­cles are, how to over­come them, and how to, as quickly as pos­sible, achieve the ulti­mate goal – a per­fect powder formulation.

Down­load this article as PDF file

Photos: Who is Danny/Adobe Stock