Inhalation sciences: New Chairman brings extensive experience in respiratory clinical trials
(Stockholm, Sweden, June 5, 2020) On June 10th Inhalation Sciences’ new Chairman, Daniel Spasic, will chair his first Board meeting. The founder of a global CRO company which carried out numerous phase II and III clinical trials for respiratory treatments, his insights will be of crucial value to ISAB as PreciseInhale® heads towards clinical validation. So why did it take Spasic so long to accept the position? And what finally persuaded him?
“I’d spent a lot of time in respiratory clinical research before, but not so much on the preclinical or in vitro, in vivo side,” Daniel Spasic says. “Plus, I could see that ISAB had a long history, but with modest sales and revenues. So, I felt the need to talk to advisers in my respiratory network and find out more about where in the drug development continuum PreciseInhale® and DissolvIt® would fit and add most value to research. “I talked to respiratory physicians, Scientific Advisory Board members and so on. One of the Advisors had recently completed a clinical phase II study on a new respiratory treatment. He provided some very valuable feedback “if we’d known about this instrument two years ago, we wouldn’t have had an inclusive phase II clinical trial that absorbed so much development costs and time”. For me that really confirmed the Inhalation Sciences business case. After receiving such feedback from a senior Advisor, I simply thought— ‘OK, this company really has a technology that can change respiratory drug research into something much better and more efficient.”
PRECISEINHALE AS A MODELLING TOOL FOR CLINICAL TRIALS Daniel Spasic founded TFS Trial Form Support International (TFS), a world-leading midsized global clinical Contract Research Organization (CRO), in 1996. The company ran a wide range of global phase II and phase III trials in asthma, COPD and CF (cystic fibrosis). “The comments underlined the value PreciseInhale data can add to clinical trials” Spasic says. “Because they’re precise and predictive, these data can show where and how the drug will behave within the lung early on, so right away you can start modelling your trial protocol to significantly increase the chances of a successful clinical outcome. You can avoid the entire ‘hope for the best’ approach, where you go through all the clinical phases and find out the hard, and expensive way, how the product will perform. Ultimately, any company carrying out aerosol or respiratory testing will need to have a system like PreciseInhale® or DissolvIt®, the reason being that it is the best instrument that can measure and predict your clinical outcome or the potency of the drug. So you can design your study protocol accordingly.”
A NEW RENAISSANCE FOR RESPIRATORY RESEARCH Spasic is also non-Executive Director of NuvoAir, a highly innovative respiratory company developing digital technology to monitor and treat extremely severe respiratory conditions. The inhalation research arena, Spasic believes, is now in a period of accelerated growth and innovation.
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DANIEL SPASIC: MEET THE CHAIRMAN
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“In my early days respiratory science was all about asthma” he says. “Now there is a lot of work going on within different sub-indications too, like severe COPD, which is relatively new. New orphan and secondary respiratory indications are pushing the horizons of respiratory research. Genetic muscular-skeletal diseases are not primarily respiratory, but it is the lungs which give up and inflict the worst impact and that must be treated. Inhalation has always been an innovative field but there is a lot happening right now.”
As a severe respiratory condition that is alerting scientists and healthcare professionals all over again to the complexity of the lung, does Spasic believe the Coronavirus crisis will be a factor in increasing respiratory research? “Yes. Respiratory research is only going to grow. Inhalation science has been expanding for a long time, but when you look at what drug and treatments are currently available, I’d say they have plateaued a little. Right now, people are looking for next-generation inhalation solutions, whether devices or drugs, that can further improve the health of patients. It’s extremely rewarding to be part of that journey.”
For more information about Inhalation Sciences, please contact:
Manoush Masarrat, CEO
E-mail: Manoush.masarrat@inhalation.se
Mobile: +46 (0)73 628 9153
About Inhalations Sciences Sweden AB (publ)
Inhalation Sciences Sweden AB (publ) develops and commercializes world-leading instruments for research into inhalation. The company’s patented lab instrument, PreciseInhale®, enables researchers to characterize, with high precision, how aerosols and small particles impact our lungs, and so our health, when we inhale them.
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