A team of engineers has identified the ‘violent’ physical processes at work inside the lungs which cause wheezing, a condition that affects up to a quarter of the world’s population.
Many current inhalers for conditions such as asthma contain propellants that are potent greenhouse gases. A study from researchers at the University of Cambridge has found that switching to alternative, greener inhalers would not only result in large carbon savings, but could be achieved alongside reduced drug costs by using less expensive brands.
Ian Hosking from Cambridge’s Engineering Design Centre is co-founder and co-leader of Designing Our Tomorrow, a collaboration between the Department of Engineering and the Faculty of Education which brings real-world problems into classroom design and technology sessions. Here, he describes the culmination of a year-long project in which secondary school students designed packaging solutions for the treatment of childhood asthma.
Solutions designed by secondary school students as part of an innovative classroom design and technology programme could help reduce the number of unnecessary deaths from childhood asthma.
A collaboration between the University of Cambridge and MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has led researchers to identify a potentially significant new application for a well-known human enzyme, which may have implications for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma.
A new method of observing exactly what happens to drug particles as they travel from an asthma inhaler to the lungs could lead to the development of more efficient asthma treatments.
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