Laleh Golshahi, Ph.D.

Engineering Foundation Professor, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering VCU College of Engineering

  • Richmond VA

Dr. Golshahi specializes in aerosol science and in vitro-in vivo correlations for respiratory support, diagnosis and inhalation therapy.

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Spotlight

4 min

Researchers explore alternate delivery method for potential Alzheimer’s treatment

“Traditionally, the nose has been used as a route for delivery of locally acting drugs,” Laleh Golshahi, Ph.D., explained. “But recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the direct pathway through the olfactory region. That’s the same region where we smell, and that route is a direct pathway to the brain.” Golshahi, associate professor in VCU’s Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, leads the collaboration. Other members of the group are Worth Longest, Ph.D., the Louis S. and Ruth S. Harris Exceptional Scholar and Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; Michael Hindle, Ph.D., the Peter R. Byron Distinguished Professor in VCU’s Department of Pharmaceutics; and Arya Bazargani, a Ph.D. student in VCU’s Interdisciplinary Center for Pharmaceutical Engineering and Sciences. The project is supported by a $200,000 internal grant from VCU Breakthroughs, a new internal funding mechanism as part of the Optimizing Health thrust of the One VCU Research Strategic Priorities Plan being implemented by the university’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. Hindle said that studies of nasally administered insulin have shown some promise for reducing the effects of Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, delivery by injection, the most common way to deliver insulin, is ineffective for Alzheimer’s and other cerebral conditions because of the blood-brain barrier. Bazargani explained that nose-to-brain delivery of pharmaceuticals circumvents the blood-brain barrier, the lining of the blood vessels that surround the brain, guarding the central nervous system against a host of pathogens. “It’s usually a good thing,” he said. “But not when you’re trying to induce therapeutic effects into the brain.” Bazargani explained that insulin molecules are so large that the blood-brain barrier filters out most of the insulin. Hindle pointed out that even though the VCU team is avoiding the blood-brain barrier, insulin delivery still presents a number of challenges. “Insulin is a pretty fragile molecule, you know. It’s stored in the fridge,” Hindle said. “We need to include insulin in some sort of stable formulation — either a powder or a liquid nasal spray. We have to create the right particle or droplet size to get it into the right area of the nose.” Formulation development is only half of a two-pronged challenge, Golshahi said. The second aspect is the creation of a device that can deliver a dose way up to the olfactory region. “The nose is a challenge, because it’s designed as a filter to keep aerosols out of the body,” said Longest, who, along with Golshahi and Hindle, brings expertise in computational fluid dynamics to the team. “And the olfactory region is an especially troubling or difficult region to target, because it’s designed just to let a few molecules of what we inhale deposit.” Chief among the nasal filtering defenses, Golshahi said, is mucociliary clearance. Nasal passages are lined with mucous-coated cilia — moving microscopic projections on cells — sweeping foreign substances out of the air we breathe. The cilia do an excellent job, she said, but their efficiency makes it difficult to achieve a consistent delivery to the olfactory region. Another challenge, she added, lies in the fact that all noses are different. The collaborators are using in vitro and in silico methodologies. For the in vitro work, they have an array of 3D printed nose models, based on computed tomography (CT) scans. Golshahi said they have multiple anatomical casts of human nasal airways to test likely device/formulation combinations for their insulin/Alzheimer’s initiative. “We are going to use three of those nasal casts as our starting point,” she said. “We’ll connect the casts to a breathing simulator, which is basically a machine you can program to add the air going through — sort of bringing them to life.” Golshahi added that data from the casts will inform the in-silico component of the work — computational analysis that is expected to verify or challenge observations from the lab. Hindle said that once the team has developed a satisfactory formulation-device system, they can tackle the next challenge: identifying the dominant pathway from the olfactory region to the brain. “There are a variety of theories out there,” he said. “It could go along the nerve passageway. It could go between the nerve walls and the cells linking them.” “We have all the equipment and all the expertise necessary to be able to develop a formulation, and to put it in a device that leads to the highest amount of delivery to the target region,” Golshahi said. “And we are able to quantify how successful that combination of formulation and device is.”

Laleh Golshahi, Ph.D.Worth Longest, Ph.D.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning
Mechanical/Industrial Engineering

Areas of Expertise

Aerosol Science and Medicine
In Vitro and In Vivo Models Of Respiratory Deposition
Health-Related Aerosols Exposure Control
Targeted Respiratory Drug Delivery
Aerosol filtration
Biotherapeutics
Gas and aerosol transport in biological systems

Accomplishments

The International Society for Aerosols in Medicine Young Investigator Award

2019-05-28

https://www.isam.org/awards

VCU Presidential Research Quest (2017-2018)

2017-06-12

https://research.vcu.edu/vpr/research_fund/index.htm

University of Alberta Dissertation Fellowship, Canada (2011-2012)

Recipient of the University of Alberta Dissertation Fellowship, Canada (2011-2012)

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Education

Virginia Commonwealth University

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Pharmaceutics

2014

University of Alberta

Ph.D.

Mechanical Engineering

2012

University of Calgary

M.S

Mechanical Engineering

2007

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Affiliations

  • The International Society for Aerosols in Medicine (ISAM)
  • The American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR)
  • American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS)
  • The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
  • The Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA)
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Research Focus

Nasal Drug Delivery

Understand and improve nasal drug delivery by developing methods that can predict local deposition pattern of administered nasal drug delivery devices for various applications e.g. allergic rhinitis, nose-to-brain, etc.

Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS)

Understand respiratory effects of vapor and aerosol emitted from ENDS using bio-similar models of airways

Applications of Aerosol Technology and Fluid Dynamics in Advancing the Performance and Safety of Aerosol Therapy and Respiratory Support

Understand and improve respiratory support and inhalation therapy for various applications including high flow nasal cannula therapy using bio-relevant in vitro platforms

Courses

EGMN 591: ST: Introduction to Particle Science and Technology

EGMN 591: ST: Introduction to Particle Science and Technology is a technical elective course. Particles are ubiquitous in the environment in many different forms such as dusts, pollens, smoke, fume and smog, so the knowledge of their behavior is essential for their control. Understanding the behavior of particles is also the focus of respiratory drug delivery specialists. The course covers the basics of properties of gases, particle motion, size statistics, adhesion of particles, coagulation, condensation and evaporation, electrical and optical properties of particles in carrier gases, filtration and brief discussion of respiratory deposition. The course is beneficial for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and professionals with interests in environmental science, air pollution control, industrial hygiene, radiation protection and pulmonary drug delivery.

EGMN 591: ST: Turbomachinery

This is also a technical elective course. The course is designed with the aim of a balanced coverage of theory and application of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of turbomachinery. Starting with background principles in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics, the course progresses to discuss axial flow turbines and compressors, centrifugal pumps, fans, and compressors, and radial flow gas turbines, hydraulic turbines, and wind turbines. The course is beneficial for senior undergraduate and graduate students, who are interested in the aerospace, global power, oil & gas and other industries who are involved in the design and operation of turbomachines.

EGMN 201: Dynamics and Kinematics

Dynamics addresses the accelerated motion of a body. The principles of kinematics and kinetics of particles and rigid bodies in two dimensions are covered in this course. Kinematics only considers the geometric aspects of the motion, and kinetics is the part where the forces causing the motion are analyzed.

Selected Articles

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