Bespak in collaborative research programme with London School of Pharmacy

Drug delivery device company Bespak and the University of London's School of Pharmacy (SOP) have announced a research programme to study site-specific delivery of antibodies in the respiratory tract.

The programme aims to discover more efficient ways of delivering medication to the respiratory tract, using innovative medical devices developed by Bespak and the formulation expertise of SOP.

Bespak designs and manufactures drug delivery devices to deliver drugs to the nasal cavity and lungs. More recently, the company has enhanced its delivery expertise to consider how devices can speed efficient drug delivery that will have a systematic impact. The company will jointly fund the research project with De-partment of Trade and Industry (DTI), providing its expertise in aerosolisation and testing, as well as de-veloping the physical components incorporated in prototype drug delivery devices.

Bespak will make advanced test equipment available to SOP to accurately ascertain and analyse device performance. Bespak and SOP believe that the programme offers the potential to significantly ad-vance the effectiveness of inhaled antibodies.

Dr Tol Purewal, Bespak's head of r&d, says the lung and nasal cavity provide many benefits as a drug delivery route. 'By delivering therapeutics to specific regions of the respiratory tract, it's possible to reach highly vascularised membranes that allow for rapid uptake and avoid first-pass metabolism,' he explained.

'The identification of highly specific molecular targets has unearthed a striking variety of potentially ground-breaking vaccines and therapies. The key to their realisation is the successful delivery of these in-novative biotherapeutics to the right tissues,' added Professor H. Oya Alpar, SOP's head of centre for drug delivery research.

'By bringing the concept of molecular science into pharmaceutics and formulation science, and following a multidisciplinary approach which will encompass all aspects of inhalational therapy, we can engineer de-livery systems that meet the requirements of these new molecules, including biodefence antibodies.'