Professor Shyamal Das is investigating how cannabidiol could be administered via a dry powder inhaler to help alleviate asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Image credit: Artinun Prekmoung/Vecteezy.
Professor Shyamal Das has secured funding to investigate how cannabidiol can be administered via a dry powder inhaler.
Cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive chemical from cannabis, has the potential to alleviate the symptoms of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, and seizures.
Professor Shyamal Das
However, its poor solubility in water and low bioavailability - the extent to which it can reach its biological destination – makes it difficult to turn into tablets, capsules or injections and form an effective medicine.
But with the help of Otago Medical Research Foundation funding, Professor Das, of the School of Pharmacy, hopes he will find a solution.
“Using a dry powder inhaler might avoid the issues presented by cannabidiol by delivering it directly to the lungs and also allowing it to reach the heart very quickly,” he says.
“This can be useful for respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses as well as brain diseases because cannabidiol can be delivered to those disease sites via respiratory routes.”
The project team – Professor Das, Professor Michelle Glass, from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and PhD candidate Komal Taya – will consider various formulation components to continually improve the efficiency of the medicine, its delivery method, the stability of the powder during storage, the efficacy of the formulations for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and whether the formulations will be tolerated by human cells.
Professor Das had spent almost a decade working at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences on the development of asthma inhalers before moving to Otago to be a Senior Lecturer. He now operates out of his own ‘Das Laboratory’.
~ Kōrero by the Division of Health Sciences Communications Adviser, Kelsey Schutte.