I-Corps: All-in-One Virtual Human Testing Platform for Inhalation

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一个虚拟平台，为人类医疗应用设计和测试吸入器。这项拟议的技术旨在模拟各种类型的吸入器在健康和患病肺部排放的气流和雾化药物的吸入，以及药物向人体其他部位的转移。目前，由于向小气道的药物输送效率低，无效的治疗结果导致3.65亿患者患上肺部疾病。帮助开发更有效的吸入器的技术可能有助于实现更好的药物输送和治疗结果。拟议的平台可用于量化从吸入器排放到人体呼吸系统的雾化药物的气流和输送剂量，以及药物在全身的转移。拟议的平台可以节省66%的成本和90%的时间用于吸入器的开发和审批，加快需要吸入器的肺部保健研究和新疗法的开发。这可能会改善肺部疾病患者的肺部健康和生活质量。这个i-Corps项目基于开发一个软件平台，以模拟从各种类型的吸入器排放的雾化药物的气流和吸入。拟议的技术是一个基于网络的用户界面和云计算平台，可用于评估吸入器的性能和生物等效性。拟议的平台使用特定于疾病的全肺模型来了解吸入器如何在特定于疾病和特定患者的肺环境中提供准确的剂量。此外，它还可用于评估肺部疾病如何改变肺弹性和呼吸道形态以影响药物沉积，并提供高分辨率数据，以增强对疾病状况、吸入器设计和药物配方如何影响肺部疾病治疗指定肺部部位的药物输送效率的基本理解。使用该平台评估新的吸入器的性能可能会加快吸入器创新的进程和用于治疗肺部疾病的新产品的监管批准，并推动吸入器创新超越现有的计算肺模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a virtual platform to design and test inhalers for human medical applications. The proposed technology is designed to simulate airflow and the inhalation of aerosolized medication emitted from various types of inhalers in both healthy and diseased lungs, as well as drug translocation to other parts of the human body. Currently, ineffective therapeutic outcomes cause 365 million patients to suffer from lung diseases due to low medication delivery efficiency to small airways. Technology to aid in the development of more effective inhalers may help to achieve better drug delivery and therapeutic outcomes. The proposed platform may be used to quantify airflow and the delivered dose of aerosolized medication emitted from inhalers into human respiratory systems, as well as the translocation of medications in the whole body. The proposed platform may save 66% of the cost and 90% of the time for inhaler development and approval, accelerating pulmonary healthcare research and the development of new therapeutics that require inhalers. This may improve pulmonary health and quality of life for patients with lung diseases.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a software platform to simulate airflow and the inhalation of aerosolized medication emitted from various types of inhalers. The proposed technology is a web-based user interface and cloud-computing platform that may be used to evaluate inhaler performance and bioequivalence. The proposed platform uses disease-specific whole-lung models to understand how inhalers deliver accurate doses in disease-specific and patient-specific lung environments. In addition, it may be used to evaluate how lung disease can change lung elasticities and airway morphologies to affect drug deposition, and provide high-resolution data to enhance the fundamental understanding of how disease conditions, inhaler design, and drug formulation can influence drug delivery efficiency to designated lung sites for lung disease treatments. Evaluation of new inhalation device performance using this platform may accelerate the process of inhaler innovation and regulatory approval of new products to treat pulmonary diseases as well as advance inhaler innovation beyond what existing computational lung models have achieved.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.