Returning to Arizona this year, Respiratory Drug Delivery (RDD) brought together experts from across industry, academia and regulatory science to discuss the future of inhaled and nasal drug delivery.
For Copley, the event highlighted a clear direction of travel: more advanced and informative in vitro testing, greater focus on reproducibility and transferability, and growing demand for practical analytical tools that can support increasingly complex products.
If you could not attend this year, missed a session, or simply want a concise overview, here are our key takeaways from RDD 2026.
In this blog:
- Regulatory insight and interest.
- Updates on the implementation of inhaled dissolution.
- Perspectives on device and drug candidate trends
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Celebrating worthy winners and an MDI milestone
RDD 2026 also marked 70 years of the metered dose inhaler (MDI) a major milestone for a technology that has transformed respiratory healthcare.
The meeting also celebrated achievement across the respiratory drug delivery community. Anthony Hickey received the Charles G Thiel Award, recognising his impact across academia, entrepreneurship, industry collaboration and research into inhaled therapeutics for tuberculosis.
The 2026 VCU RDD Peter R. Byron Graduate Student Award was presented to Teri Ross from the University of Alabama at Birmingham for work using Optical Photothermal Infrared Microscopy to characterise the size and composition of aerosolised DPI blends. Using this novel technique Teri was able to access fresh insights into the performance of commercially available devices laying the groundwork for further advances in this area.
Intensifying interest in inhaled dissolution
Inhaled dissolution has been a recurring topic of interest across the inhaled drug delivery community for some time, and RDD 2026 reinforced its continued importance in the development and assessment of OINDPs. What felt different this year was the shift in emphasis. Discussions are moving beyond the scientific rationale for inhaled dissolution and towards the practical question of how it can be implemented consistently, reproducibly and in a way that supports meaningful decision-making.
Across posters, presentations and informal conversations, the focus was not simply on whether inhaled dissolution has value, but on how methods can be made transferable between sites, capable of generating consistent data and suitable for use within existing development workflows.
A key challenge remains: how to balance biological relevance with the robustness required for routine use. Methods must provide meaningful insight into post-deposition drug behaviour while remaining standardised, repeatable and practical enough for wider adoption.
This was reflected in the strong engagement with our workshop and the interest shown in the new Copley Inhaled Dissolution Apparatus™ IDA. The IDA has been developed to support inhaled dissolution testing by collecting aerosolised drug onto a filter and enabling dissolution profiling under controlled conditions, addressing long-standing challenges around repeatability and comparability.
For those who would like to explore the topic further, our RDD 2026 presentation is available on demand via the RDD website. To discuss how the IDA could support your own inhaled dissolution testing workflows, please get in touch with our team.
Evolving regulatory engagement and expectations
The FDA presented research exploring the use of AI and advanced in vitro tools to help streamline the review and approval process, while maintaining product safety and quality standards. Much of this work was conducted in collaboration with industry, highlighting the agency’s continued focus on openness, scientific engagement and advancing regulatory science.
Regulatory science was another prominent theme. Several discussions at RDD focused on how in vitro testing can become more clinically relevant while still reducing unnecessary analytical burden. The direction of travel is encouraging: stronger scientific justification, more meaningful data and methods that can support efficient development without compromising confidence.
For pMDIs, discussions around future FDA product-specific guidances suggested a refinement in the suggested scope of in vitro bioequivalence (IVBE) studies, including:
- Single Actuation Content
- APSD
- Realistic APSD
- Dissolution (where API bioavailability is dissolution limited)
Realistic APSD aims to improve the clinical relevance of aerosol performance testing by moving beyond standardised test set-ups to help bridge the gap between in vitro testing and in vivo performance, for example through the use of more representative breathing profiles and throat or nasal models. For readers less familiar with the term, our blogs on realistic APSD provides a useful introduction.
A shifting device, drug and dosage landscapes
SMIs gaining traction
Soft Mist Inhalers (SMIs) were another notable area of interest, with increased development activity pointing to growing confidence in their clinical and commercial potential.
For development teams, SMIs offer several advantages. Their mechanical delivery mechanism removes the need for propellant-based actuation, while their ease of use, high patient acceptance and strong potential for lung deposition make them attractive for future inhaled therapies.
However, discussions also reinforced a familiar challenge: technical promise alone does not guarantee adoption. Cost, accessibility, reimbursement and evidence of clinical or practical value remain important considerations.
This wider adoption challenge was also evident in discussions around digital and connected devices. As with SMIs, broader uptake will depend not only on technical performance, but also on affordability, usability and demonstrated value for patients, clinicians and healthcare systems.
Blockbusters and biologics
From a therapeutic perspective, inhaled GLP-1 therapies for weight management attracted notable attention. The high-profile success of injectable products appears to be driving interest in more patient-friendly delivery routes and opportunities for drug repurposing.
Biologics were another important area of discussion, with strategies for inhaled delivery continuing to mature. Scientists working in this space highlighted the need for a different approach to product development, supported by a broader analytical toolbox.
There was also clear overlap with high-dose delivery. Here, formulation discussions focused on patient tolerability, minimising cough response and developing more “neutral” formulations.
Overall, the message was clear: formulation requirements are becoming more complex, and the supporting science will need to evolve accordingly.
The accelerating transition to low-GWP propellants.
The transition to low Global Warming Potential (low-GWP) propellants has been a recurring conference theme for several years since reformulating MDIs is not a simple substitution exercise.
Multiple sessions across the conference highlighted how propellant changes can affect aerosol performance, reinforcing the need for sensitive, more clinically relevant analytical tools and robust comparative in vitro datasets.
Datasets illustrating how a propellant switch can materially alter aerosol performance characteristics continue to reinforce the need for sensitive, clinically relevant analytical tools. These discussions also overlapped with broader regulatory thinking around IVBE study design, particularly the need to understand whether reformulated products perform comparably using methods that are both discriminating and reproducible.
Advancing and automating analysis
Automation was another recurring theme, with growing recognition of its ability to standardise repetitive elements of analytical workflows, improve reproducibility and support cross-site transferability.
For inhaler testing, this is especially relevant where manual steps can introduce variability into otherwise well-established methods. Automated solutions can help laboratories generate data more consistently while improving workflow efficiency and traceability.
As inhaled product testing becomes more complex, automation has an important role to play in making advanced analytical workflows more practical to implement. Its value lies in supporting reliable, repeatable processes that give laboratories greater confidence in the data they generate.
Looking ahead after RDD 2026
Overall, RDD 2026 showed an industry in transition. Low-GWP MDI reformulation is accelerating, next-generation inhaled products are becoming more complex, and regulatory and scientific attention is increasingly focused on analytical methods that provide more clinically relevant insight.
At the same time, the message from the conference was clear: scientific sophistication alone is not enough. Methods must also be reproducible, transferable and practical to implement.
For Copley, the event reinforced the importance of developing tools and expertise that help laboratories generate relevant, reliable data across inhaled dissolution, realistic APSD, automation and wider OINDP testing workflows.
If you are exploring how to implement more clinically relevant, reproducible or transferable inhaled product testing workflows, our team would be happy to discuss how Copley can support your next steps.
