T
he most important advance
in inhaled therapy for chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD) in the past 50 years
didn’t come from the discov-
ery of a molecule or biological
mechanism but instead from an
international treaty that phased
out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
These chemicals, which had been found todamage the atmospheric ozone layer, were
used as propellants in inhalers that deliver
drugs to the lungs.
The adoption of the Montreal Protocol in
September 1987 by the United Nations cre-
ated a sudden need to find alternatives to
CFCs, and injected a much needed spark of
innovation into the inhaler field, says Stephen
Stein, an aerosol scientist at manufacturing
company 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, who hasbeen involved in inhaler research for more
than 20 years. As companies raced to develop
the first non-CFC inhaler, they also “took the
opportunity to improve upon a technology
that really had kind of stagnated over the past
decades”, Stein says.
The result was a plethora of inhalers and
inhaled drugs that transformed the care of
people with COPD. “We went from allowing
patients to put up with their symptoms toSAM CHIVERSS14 | Nature | Vol 581 | 14 May 2020COPD
outlook
THE INHALER
MAKEOVER
Environmental concerns
and the perennial problem
of poor inhaler techniqueare driving change in the
devices used to deliver
respiratory drugs.By Sarah DeWeerdt
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2020
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2020
Springer
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