Inhaled nintentanib, Pirfenidone and Macitentan for Pulmonary Fibrosis: a Laboratory Experiment

Abstract

Aim: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a rare disease with few efficient drugs in the market. The consequences of this disease are mainly respiratory failure and pulmonary hypertension. Materials & methods: In our experiment we used the drugs pirfenidone, nintetanib and macitentan. We performed nebulization experiments with three jet nebulizers and three ultrasound nebulizers with different combinations of residual cup designs, and residual cup loadings in order to identify which combination produces droplets of less than 5 μm in mass median aerodynamic diameter. Results: Pirfenidone versus nintetanib had smaller droplet size formation at both inhaled technologies (1.37 < 2.23 and 1.92 < 3.11, jet and ultrasound respectively). Discussion: Pirfenidone and nintetanib can be administered as aerosol in any type of nebulization system.

Keywords:

• jet-nebulizers
• macitentan
• milling
• nintetanib
• pirfenidone
• pulmonary hypertension
• ultrasound nebulizers

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at:www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/epi-2016-0184

Author contributions

P Zarogoulidis, D Petridis, H Huang, C Bai, P Oikonomou, C Nikolaou, D Matthaios, E-Isidora Perdikouri, V Papadopoulos, S Petanidis, C Kosmidis, C Charalampidis, W Hohenforst-Schmidt, N Kougkas, C Sardeli wrote the manuscript, performed the experiments and collected the data. P Zarogoulidis and D Petridis performed the statistics.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.