Innovation? It’s child’s play

In 2017, the Judges’ Choice of the most serendipitous innovation went to Jeff Weers of Respira Therapeutics for his previous work on the successful commercialisation of TOBI® Podhaler®, the first dry‐powder, inhaled antibiotic for cystic fibrosis.

And while Jeff can’t talk about the specifics his latest work regarding Respira’s partnership with United Therapeutic for commercially sensitive reasons, the Chief Technology Officer’s passion for science and innovation – and his abiding interest in what actually lies behind that ‘eureka’ moment – means he is only too happy to explain the long genesis that eventually bore fruit in a truly revolutionary new technology.

One crucial requirement, he says (but without any hint of arrogance), is having the courage to be different to what the rest of the industry is doing: “My background is centred around how to engineer particles to accomplish different things and we haven’t let ourselves be bound by what the rest of the industry is doing. The teams I've had the pleasure to work alongside are renowned for taking risks, challenging current norms and trying to change the field.”

That willingness to take risks led the team at Inhale to develop the first-ever inhaled protein delivered for systemic action (inhaled insulin, Exubera®) – which required nothing less than having “to change how medicine was being done at the time.” While everyone else was taking a micronised drug and blending it with lactose, the team decided stabilize the protein in an amorphous glass via spray drying, thereby creating the first room-temperature stable insulin product on the market.

Continued advances in the spray drying technology used in Exubera now enables up to 95% of the insulin dose that is delivered from a portable dry powder inhaler to be deposited in patient’s lungs. Current marketed inhalers deliver between 10% and 40% of the dose into the lungs.These dramatic improvements in “lung targeting” reduce the potential for side effects, while also improving the consistency of dosing. 

The other critical aspect to the breakthrough – and this is where Jeff’s fascination with baseball came in – lay in an appreciation of the critical role of aerodynamics; not something one would normally associate with pulmonary drug delivery systems.

There is a rather charming short video on the Novartis YouTube channel titled “How baseball transformed particle engineering” in which Jeff explains how the concept came about. Having been a decent pitcher – capable of hurling a hard rubber sphere wrapped in cowhide down at over 90mph – he was struck by the difference between the aerodynamic properties of a baseball and those of a wiffle ball. Although roughly the same size as a baseball, this perforated, light-weight, hollow plastic orb designed originally for kids play behaves dramatically differently in aerodynamic terms. One key difference is speed: “When you inhale porous particles, as opposed to solid ones, they are able to move much more slowly and with less inertia than a solid particle, so they are much more effective in passing the bend from the mouth to the throat and down into the lungs. This allows the delivery of much higher doses of the drug than had been previously possible with solid particles.”