Paper: Can a combination of magnesium stearate and fines tune the inhalable fraction of a mannitol carrier based interactive blend?
Nancy is currently pursuing her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Regina Scherließ. She studied pharmacy at Halle University from October 2008 to March 2010 and at Kiel University from April 2010 to November 2013 followed by her practical training. As part of that Nancy accomplished a six months internship at the Department of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics of Kiel University under supervision of Prof. Hartwig Steckel. At that time she worked on the generic development of semisolids.
In April 2015 she started with her PhD. The main focus of her PhD project (in cooperation with Merck KGaA, Germany) is the evaluation of a spray-granulated mannitol quality for its suitability as carrier for interactive powder blends in inhalation. In this project she first characterised a commercial mannitol with respect to particle size distribution, morphology, density and stability. She then thoroughly looked into the use of this material as carrier in interactive blends. In the course of that she prepared interactive blends and tested aerodynamic behaviour with different inhalers along with physico-chemical characterisation. With these data she supported the development of a commercial “mannitol for inhalation” quality which is now available as Parteck M DPI.
In the second part of her project she compared the performance of mannitol as carrier material to the standard carrier lactose, she worked out differences and similarities. In the final part of her PhD project she then looked into the possibilities to tune performance of this new carrier material.