The Freeman Technology-sponsored prize for the best poster at December’s Powder Flow 2011 conference was presented to Hanne Kinnunen, a PhD student at the University of Bath in the UK. Her presentation ‘The impact of loaded drug dose and the surface roughness of the coarse lactose carrier to the fluidisation characteristics of dry powder inhaler formulations’ was co-authored with Jag Shur and Robert Price, also from the Pharmaceutical Surface Science Research Group in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at Bath, and Gerald Hebbink from DFE Pharma in Borcolo, The Netherlands.
The primary aim of the work was to investigate the impact of increasing drug concentration on the fluidisation properties of dry powder inhaler (DPI) formulations prepared with carriers having different surface characteristics. The results indicated that the fluidisation properties of the formulations prepared with the carrier that had a higher degree of surface roughness were less susceptible to change in fluidisation properties when the concentration of the drug was increased.
Tim Freeman, Director of Operations at Freeman Technology was part of the judging team. “It was really pleasing to see a strong set of posters and the judges certainly didn’t have an easy task,” he said. “Our congratulations go to Hanne and I’d like to wish her every success with her continuing research work.”
Powder Flow 2011 is a one-day conference that was held in London on 6 December, and followed a successful inaugural event in 2009. As well as providing the £250 poster prize, Freeman Technology exhibited the FT4 Powder Rheometer at the event.