Pulmonary Drug Delivery Systems: Material and Technological Advances

Nanoparticles have been developed to overcome the limitation of free therapeutics and enable targeting of specific sites in a controlled manner; they have been proven to be effective as drug carriers and diagnostic tools. Pulmonary drug delivery is greatly preferred in the treatment of lung diseases and has its advantages over other drug delivery routes in the treatment of systemic diseases as well. However, delivering nanoparticles to the lung is hindered by their physical instability and poor lung deposition efficiency due to particle-particle interaction and low inertia, respectively. Developing inhalable nanoparticles as part of an inhalable solid state dry powder combines the advantages of pulmonary and nanoparticle drug delivery systems and offers unique advantages. Several particle engineering techniques have been utilized to combine nanoparticles within a form of micron-scale dry powder carrier with improved handling and aerosolization properties and the ability to release the nanoparticles upon deposition in the lungs. This chapter will describe the different classes of nanoparticles and the different inhalable nano-in-micro dry particle frameworks. The different particle engineering techniques used for developing these frameworks will also be discussed.