Available for Licensing
TRL: 5
US Provisional Patent
Mercedes Gonzalez-Juarrero
Jeffrey Mariner Gonzalez
Jessy McGowan
Jessy.McGowan@colostate.edu
970-491-7100
At a Glance
Researchers at Colorado State University have developed an aerosol chamber for low dose administration of dry powder medications to animals. This new chamber allows for administration of long term therapies in preclinical in vivo studies at biologically significant levels, while keeping the animals calm and relaxed. This allows for more clinically relevant studies, and the removal of some confounding variables in preclinical dry powder medication studies.
Background
There is an unmet need for testing the efficacy of dry powders in preclinical studies. Studies requiring daily and long-term (months) administration of drugs via inhalation are limited by lack of appropriate inhalational devices. Current inhalation devices are not suitable for this purpose because they require the use of very large quantities of dry powders and because conscious animals must be restrained into chambers. These restraining techniques place the animal under enough stress to make long term exposure both ineffective and untenable.
Overview
The passive inhalation chamber presented here allows for creation of an aerosol of a dry powder within an anesthetizing environment. Since the aerosol is in a standing cloud the dry powder drug is recycled within the chamber, meaning far less loading of the drug is needed to achieve inhalation at biologically active levels. This improves efficiency of the drug used and allows for research to be conducted on compounds and drugs that are not in mass production or are otherwise highly cost or supply constrained.
The chamber allows for multiple doses and allows the subjects to relax far more than the current methods of preclinical testing. Demonstration images and data is available upon request.
Benefits
- Reduced amount of dry powder needed for preclinical study
- Ability to study long term dosages and effects of multiple doses
- More accurate and biologically relevant research due to
- More accurate dosing
- Subject relaxation
- Administration of powder is more biomimetic
Applications
- Drug development of dry powders
- Long term exposure studies
- Multiple dose studies
- Antibiotic Delivery
- Aerosolized drug delivery and study (i.e. steroids, bronchodialators, etc)
Pre-Clinical Data
Initial results available upon request
Last updated: October 2022
