Over the past 10 years, the interest in intranasal drug delivery in pharmaceutical R&D has increased. This review article summarises information on intranasal administration for local and systemic delivery, as well as for CNS indications. Nasal delivery offers many advantages over standard systemic delivery systems, such as its non-invasive character, a fast onset of action and in many cases reduced side effects due to a more targeted delivery. There are still formulation limitations and toxicological aspects to be optimised. Intranasal drug delivery in the field of drug development is an interesting delivery route for the treatment of neurological disorders. Systemic approaches often fail to efficiently supply the CNS with drugs. This review paper describes the anatomical, histological and physiological basis and summarises currently approved drugs for administration via intranasal delivery. Further, the review focuses on toxicological considerations of intranasally applied compounds and discusses formulation aspects that need to be considered for drug development. Graphical
Air−liquid interface (ALI) culture models currently represent a valid instrument to recreate the typical aspects of the respiratory tract in vitro in both healthy and diseased state. They can help reducing the number of animal experiments, and hence support the 3R principle. This review discusses ALI cultures and co‐cultures derived from immortalized as well as primary cells, which are used to study the most common disorders of the respiratory tract, in terms of both pathophysiology and drug screening. The article displays ALI models used to simulate inflammatory lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, and viral infections. It also focuses on ALI cultures described in literature studying respiratory viruses such as SARS‐CoV‐2 causing the global Covid‐19 pandemic at the time of writing this review. Additionally, commercially available models of ALI cultures are presented. Ultimately, the aim of this review is to provide a detailed overview of ALI models currently available and to critically discuss them in the context of the most prevalent diseases of the respiratory tract.
4 October 2019 in Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences