TFF Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company developing and commercialising drug products based on its patented Thin Film Freezing (TFF) technology platform, announced data to be presented at the Respiratory Drug Delivery (RDD) Meeting, taking place between May 1-5, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.
Robert O. (Bill) Williams III, Ph.D., co-inventor of Thin Film Freezing technology and advisor to TFF Pharmaceuticals, will deliver a platform presentation with data on stabilising and delivering antivirals, antibodies and vaccines using Thin Film Freezing technology in the fight against COVID-19 and other serious viral infections.
Additionally, Dr. Williams and his colleagues will present five posters highlighting the broad applicability of Thin Film Freezing to improve drug development of biologics and small molecules for respiratory diseases, including pulmonary fibrosis and COVID-19. The findings from Dr. Williams’ lab also highlight how Thin Film Freezing can be used to facilitate delivery of other treatment modalities, such as gene therapy.
One of the five posters, which explores the use of machine learning algorithms (artificial intelligence) to analyse how Thin Film Freezing impacts aerosol delivery of dry powder therapies, was recognised at the "Poster on the Podium" session held on Monday, May 2nd.
"We are excited to share these data showcasing the incredible versatility of the Thin Film Freezing platform at the RDD conference," said Glenn Mattes, CEO of TFF Pharmaceuticals. "As we continue to advance TFF’s broad array of pipeline programs leveraging Thin Film Freezing technology to improve therapeutic safety and efficacy, Dr. Williams and his colleagues are doing equally important work in parallel to validate the technology’s effectiveness and explore future applications."
Additionally, TFF Pharmaceuticals announced the online publication of a scientific paper from researchers at the College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Austin, including Dr. Williams, which demonstrates the advantages of Thin Film Freezing technology over conventional freeze-drying techniques. The paper is titled "Accelerated mass transfer from frozen thin films during thin-film freeze-drying" and has been published on the preprint server bioRxiv, as well as submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for future publication.
Using E. coli as a model, whose viability in dry powders is highly sensitive to the water content, the research shows that the drying rate of Thin Film Freezing is significantly higher than that of conventional shelf freeze-drying. The research also notes that Thin Film Freezing can be applied to produce dry powders of E. coli and L. acidophilus with minimum bacterial viability loss, and that L. acidophilus dry powder is suitable for intranasal delivery.
Dr. Williams added, "Our lab continues to uncover new ways that Thin Film Freezing technology could revolutionise drug delivery and development by converting existing therapies and modalities, such as proteins and biologics, to dry powder formulations. This includes our latest research paper which highlights how biologics that undergo Thin Film Freezing can dry faster than conventional freeze-drying, as well as the findings to be presented at the RDD conference showing the broad applicability of the technology. I am looking forward to presenting at the conference this week and to sharing further updates from our ongoing research in the coming months."