Finlay, Warren (University of Alberta)

Purpose

Particles in the air that we breathe are a major source of detrimental health effects. On the other hand, the intentional delivery of airborne particles to the respiratory tract is an important method of delivering therapeutic drugs for the treatment of diseases e.g. asthma, flu and rhinitis, among many others. For these reasons, understanding and predicting the behavior of particles in the respiratory tract is important both for assessing the risks associated with ambient aerosol exposure, but also for improving treatments that rely on drug delivery to the respiratory tract. Because inhaled particles must enter the respiratory tract through the nose or mouth (the so-called upper airways), understanding the fate of such particles begins with understanding their fate in the upper airways. Over the span of more than two decades, the Aerosol Research Laboratory of Alberta (ARLA) has methodically explored particle behavior in the upper airways, leading to our development of idealized upper airway physical models that are now used by many academic researchers and more than 40 companies in Canada and worldwide for research on aerosol exposure and in the development and testing of inhalers.