EACH step closer to making a tangible, life-saving difference for women in childbirth worldwide makes Michelle McIntosh feel good. It is added motivation to keep driving work she knows has the potential to make a "real impact" in healthcare.
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Professor McIntosh remains leading a team at Monash University's Institute of Pharmaceutical Science on an inhalable product, already a decade in the making, to prevent postpartum haemorrhaging. To have a product active in healthcare could be "still significant years" away but Professor McIntosh said every step counted.
The Loreto College graduate, who grew up in Ballarat, this week met with Victorian Medical Research Minister Jaala Pulford, a fellow Ballaratian, with the government co-funding further clinical trials in partnership with pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson.
This will allow the project to trial life-saving drug oxytocin in a specially designed whistle-like device for inhalation. Previous trials have tested the drug via common medical inhalation devices but Professor McIntosh said a specially designed device will allow for once single, more accurate measure to be inhaled.
She did not expect any significant surprises but this was all part of the methodical nature of research.
People often don't realise how common postpartum haemorrhaging is across the board. While it's infrequent that Australians will die from this...it's still traumatic to the mother.
- Professor Michelle McIntosh
"People often don't realise how common postpartum haemorrhaging is across the board," Professor McIntosh said. "While it's infrequent that Australians will die from this because there is access to injectable oxytocin and blood transfusions, but it's still traumatic to the mother.
"We're lucky to have a strong healthcare system...We certainly designed the product with low resource settings in mind. At the same time, this can still benefit countries like Australia."
This new form of oxytocin is a dry powder that does not require refrigeration, unlike the injectable form.
Professor McIntosh said the powder form was also relatively low-cost, simple to use and should be easier to distribute in developing countries.
At the moment, the only commercially available peptide product for inhalation is insulin and Professor McIntosh said the insulin was expensive and not in common use.
To move forward, Professor McIntosh said big pharmaceutical companies, like Johnson and Johnson, were essential to take university-based research to the next level. She said too often the general perception of such companies was purely profit but rather, global healthcare and social responsibility were growing fields.
COVID-19 had helped raise awareness in drug development, Professor McIntosh said, in the sense of what huge resources and infinite amounts of money could achieve to fast-track a vaccine.
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Postpartum haemorrhage - a condition of excessive blood loss after birth - is the leading cause of maternal mortality globally, resulting in an estimated 60,000 deaths per year.
"When medtech, biotech and pharmaceutical businesses innovate, they change lives," Minister Pulford said after meeting Professor McIntosh for a project update.
Professor McIntosh said this project started "like many discoveries in science, serendipity". A student from Botswana approached her looking for a project to analytically compare two drug products.
A colleague suggested exploring alternatives for a drug that was not stable, had cold-chain storage which was hard for sub-Saharan climates, and would really engage the student.
"He got the skills he wanted and in the process learnt a lot more about postpartum haemorrhaging," Professor McIntosh said.
And so, the project continues.
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