News You Can Use | Inhalable tech to save mothers?
Scientists’ challenge
Used preventively, oxytocin can cut the rate of post-delivery bleeding complications by half by causing muscles in the uterus to contract, closing off damaged blood vessels. McIntosh’s group plans to start testing their product on 18 healthy volunteers in Australia by early next year, she says.
Doctors already use inhaled products to address respiratory conditions such as asthma and influenza. The delivery system also has potential to help with weight loss and pain, according to Patton.
The challenge for scientists is to come up with a dry-powdered formulation of liquid drugs that can be absorbed into the bloodstream via the tiny blood vessels in the lungs without losing potency.
The door is open—it’s the engineering that needs to be done to get these aerosols in, Patton says.
In the case of insulin, the hormone diabetics need to prevent sugar from accumulating in the blood, the goal for a company like Valencia, California-based MannKind is to make the inhaled drug better than the shot. MannKind is slated to report the results of late-stage tests in August involving Afrezza, an insulin taken at mealtime from a whistle-sized inhaler. The product has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of diabetes because the inhaled hormone acts faster to control blood-sugar levels, chief financial officer
Matthew Pfeffer said in a phone interview.
Pfizer’s Exubera was relatively crude by today’s standards, he says. From the perspective of a diabetic, the only thing it offered was a way to avoid injection. BLOOMBERG
