Formulation technology to repurpose drugs for inhalation delivery

Inhalation of drugs for both medicinal and recreational purposes has occurred for centuries. Over the last two decades, a variety of new formulation technologies and inhaler devices have been developed to repurpose drugs given by other routes of administration as superior inhalation products with improvements in safety, efficacy and convenience for patients. These efforts have been particularly successful for drugs for the treatments of diseases of the respiratory tract. The delivery precision, safety, tolerability and efficacy of many different drugs given by inhalation for systemic effect using these modern inhalation delivery technologies was shown to equal or exceed that for the parenteral route of administration. It is expected that more wide-spread use of this route for systemic delivery will be accepted as some of the products currently in late stage development reach the market.