AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Aerosolization-Based Techniques to Synthesize Pulmonary Drug Carrier Microparticles for Tuberculosis Therapy
CHETHANI ATHUKORALA, Hema Ravindran, Shantanu Sur, Suresh Dhaniyala, Clarkson University
Abstract Number: 475 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Tuberculosis (TB) bacilli often reside inside macrophages and stay protected by intracellular localization, leading to an inefficient response to antitubercular drugs delivered through conventional methods. Inhalational delivery of anti-TB drugs is gaining interest for its potential to deliver the drug efficiently into the affected lung regions. The objective of our study is to design a core-shell micro particle for antitubercular therapy deliverable via respiratory route and capable to target lung macrophages. The biopolymer alginate core will enable a sustained release of anti-TB drug; the shell consists of self-assembled peptide nanofibers will provide macrophage targeting through presentation of macrophage-specific tuftsin epitope. For an efficient delivery of drug in the deep lung tissue, we have developed aerosolization based-techniques to generate alginate particles in the size-range of 500 nm to 3 µm. Atomization was combined with various collection techniques such as impinging, gravity settling, and charge based electrostatic collection to find the optimal method for our purpose. We noticed that the mean size of collected alginate particles was dependent on the technique used. These techniques were compared with well-known particle collection methods, such as SKC BioSampler and Anderson Impactor. The interaction of these tuftsin epitope presenting core-shell microparticles with macrophages is currently being investigated in an in vitromodel. As a long-term objective, the generated microparticles will be tested to study their deposition dynamics in airway system using modelling and mice lung tissue distribution.