Bacteriophage PS 341 delivery has the potential to effectively improve the treatment of bacterial infections. It could be a suitable alternative to antibiotic therapy in some cases and may help overcome the present problem of antibiotic bacterial resistance. Advantages

of bacteriophages for treatment of bacterial infections include their high specificity, self replication and good safety profiles. Aside from antibacterial therapy, phages have a plethora of other exciting applications. The possibility of delivering phages via an easy to use MN device removes the risks associated with parenteral delivery and would possibly allow for patient self-administration. In order to achieve this, however, extensive further studies are required in terms of delivery device optimisation and, ultimately, human clinical trials. This study was supported in part by Wellcome Trust grant number WT094085MA. “
“The inhaled route for drug delivery has been exploited for direct targeting of locally acting drugs since the 1950s (Barnes, 2009). More recently, the lung has

also become an attractive alternative route for systemic delivery of compounds LEE011 clinical trial with poor oral bioavailability (Ehrhardt et al., 2008). While the human colonic Caco-2 cell line has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permeability screening of orally administered drugs, an economical, ethical and high throughput model for absorption prediction of candidate inhaled drugs has yet to emerge. In vitro models that have been employed for studying drug permeability, metabolism and toxicity in the bronchial epithelium include the Caco-2 cell line ( Tronde et al., 2003), and the human bronchial epithelial

cell lines Calu-3 ( Meaney et al., 1999, Foster et al., 2000 and Grainger et al., 2006), 16HBE14o- ( Ehrhardt et al., 2002 and Forbes et al., 2003) and BEAS-2B ( Sporty et al., 2008). Additionally, commercially available normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells have been assessed for permeability modelling ( Lin et al., 2007) and toxicity screening ( Balharry et al., 2008). Whilst GBA3 interspecies variations in drug handling, pharmacokinetic and safety Modulators profiles are well recognised, in vivo animal data are required for regulatory approval of inhaled drugs, with the rat being the most commonly used species due to size and ethical justifications ( Sakagami, 2006). Correlations between Caco-2 ( Tronde et al., 2003), Calu-3 ( Mathias et al., 2002) or 16HBE14o- ( Manford et al., 2005) permeability data and absorption parameters in rat in vivo or isolated perfused lung (IPL) have been established for a limited number of drug compounds. However, instances where drug permeability in human respiratory cell culture systems failed to model rat in/ex vivo pulmonary absorption have been reported ( Manford et al., 2005 and Madlova et al., 2009).