AERx Essence Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Pulmonary delivery by inhalation is already a widely used, well accepted method of administration of a variety of drugs for the treatment of respiratory diseases. Compared to other routes of administration, inhalation provides local delivery of the drug to the respiratory tract, offering a number of potential advantages, including rapid onset of action, less drug required to achieve the desired therapeutic effect, and reduced side effects because the rest of the body has lower exposure to the drug. Based on our analysis of market data from Business Insights and Wolters Kluwer PHAST, we believe that we could potentially address a market opportunity currently estimated at approximately $20 billion, and growing at over 10% per year, for inhaled treatments of chronic respiratory diseases. A large and growing segment of the market are products combining two asthma drugs in the same inhaler, providing increased convenience to the patient and potential for better management of their disease. Aradigm’s AERx inhalation technology platform is able to deliver aqueous formulations typically in 1-2 breaths conveniently, efficiently and precisely. We have a collaboration with Cydex Inc., a leader in the development and commercialization of solubilization technologies, to develop combination products using our unique proprietary technologies that contain mixtures of currently approved water- soluble and -insoluble drugs for the treatment of asthma and COPD.

Milestones
The companies are currently conducting laboratory development and testing of these products

Educational Links
For more information on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, refer to the following resources:
American Lung Association
Mayo Clinic