Joint International Workshop: “Challenges for Inhaled Drug Discovery and Development: Induced Alveolar Macrophage Responses

This workshop was jointly sponsored by the HESI Immunotoxicology Technical Committee and the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences –Great Britain.

Workshop Agenda

Please click here for a workshop agenda.

Additional details, including lodging information can also be found on the APSGB site.

Workshop Overview

Interpretation of macrophage responses and inflammatory markers arising during inhaled drug toxicology studies provides a major common scientific and regulatory challenge for those involved in developing and registering new inhaled therapies.  This challenge includes how to avoid, identify and quantify adverse effects during pre-clinical and clinical development, and how to discriminate adverse events from normal lung responses. This meeting provides an opportunity to bring together members of the scientific community across government, industry, and academia to discuss specific challenges around developing safe inhaled therapies.  The meeting will embrace multi-sector scientific perspectives and, through cross-institutional sharing of experimental approaches will discuss current practices and consider future directions in inhaled drug toxicology.

The symposium will feature short talks and case studies on topics including the biology of alveolar macrophages responses and perspectives on drug-induced alveolar macrophage responses.  Small work groups will be used to explore current practices and their scientific basis, opportunities and challenges, and the potential of new methods to advance the field.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together global groups working in this area to discuss current knowledge and methods, gaps and research needs, and best practices with regard to drug-induced macrophage responses during inhaled product development.  The state of the science, current challenges, and new approaches to discriminating adverse macrophage responses will be reviewed.