EuroCC Ireland

SME Accelerator Programme Success Story

PLM Medical Dry Powder Inhaler Design

Using HPC to Improve Dry Powder Inhaler Design

Industrial organisations involved:

Founded in 1985, Prior PLM Medical is an Irish SME that supports large medical device and pharmaceutical clients to bring their products to market sooner. The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) model supports every stage of the device development from early-stage ideation and product design, prototype manufacture and testing, injection mould tool design and moulding in a Class 8 cleanroom facility. Once the product is launched by the OEM, Prior PLM support its scale-up and industrialisation through metrology services and a dedicated tool repair facility. Locating all these facilities on a common campus allows for rapid iteration through design and test cycles.

Technical/Scientific challenge:

Dry Powder Inhaler (DPI) drug delivery devices are a growing alternative to the traditional pressurised meter dose Inhalers (pMDIs) that have several benefits. pMDIs are a known contributor of global warming potential (GWP) gases whereas DPIs require no propellant to deliver the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API). pMDIs also require tight co-ordination of the users inhalation with the dispensing of the aerosolized mixture from the device mouthpiece. DPIs require no such coordination due to the patients own inspiratory eTort being the primary driver of the dose aerosolization and emission.

However, many APIs are too cohesive to be packaged alone so carrier lactose particles are used to form a more flowable mixture. It is necessary to then deagglomerate the API from the carrier particles as they are aerosolized and transported through the device flow path before exiting the device mouthpiece.

Traditionally to assess the capability of a given device geometry to adequately deagglomerate the API/carrier particle mixture, time consuming and costly physical testing in a specialised laboratory would be conducted.

For early stage concept development cycles, such testing is often prohibitive in time and cost and not conducted until later in the design phase, which can lead to inadequate exploration of the available design space.

Solutions:

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) coupled with Discrete Element Modelling (DEM) can provide detailed insights into the ability of a given device geometry to deagglomerate API from carrier particle by interrogating particle collision statistics and flow field interaction. The size of the computational domain on the CFD side is usually in the order of 1-2million cells and on the DEM side anywhere from 20-70k particles.

To be able to conduct a simulation run in a reasonable timeframe of 1-2 days, the only computational resources that can handle such a task is a high level HPC facility.

Through contact with NCC Ireland / ICHEC, Prior PLM has been able to utilise HPC resources on the LXP run MeluXina that has allowed dozens of device designs to be simulated and compared.

Business Impact:

Access to HPC resources provided by NCC Ireland has allowed Prior PLM to engage with a completely new segment of their pharma clients with earlier stage involvement in the device/drug development process and conduct a much more thorough investigation of the early concept design space.

Benefits:

  • Much faster iteration through design alternatives – no longer relying on 3D print and physical test cycle time.
  • Much more detailed understanding of causes of performance changes – visualisation of particle motion and impacts gives a totally new perspective on which design features lead to a change in product performance.
  • CFD alone does not show how diTerent sized particles interact with the flow field – coupling between the CFD and DEM software packages completely solves this problem.