(176aj) Targeted Pulmonary Drug Delivery in COPD Patients

Personalized pulmonary drug delivery has emerged as a promising alternative treatment program for lung diseases. Currently, the major drug targeting devices, such as dry powder inhalers (DPI) and pressurized metered dose inhalers (pMDI), apply the inhaled medication without the focused deposition at the site of disease. However, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) require targeted medications that recognize the heterogeneous nature of lung diseases and eliminates the off-target side effects of drugs. The accurate and regional deposition evaluation of drug particles and the adherence variation of particle to mucosa are made possible through coupled framework between computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) models. The lung geometry of COPD patients is utilized and the regional differences in mucosa ability to adhere drug particles are estimated through the variation in concentration and thickness of the airway epithelium at disease regions. The optimum specification of the drug is evaluated based on the highest regional deposition fraction (DF) at the site of disease using Rocky DEM - ANSYS workbench integration. The results are compared with the healthy patients and the efficiency of the optimally engineered drug is evaluated based on the total and regional DFs. In addition, the proposed approach can be applied to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the pulmonary-route drug administration for systemic treatment.