Inhalation dosage forms present unique problems when developing a dissolution test due to their physicochemical properties and the physiological environment in which they should release their content.

DissolvIt^® was developed as a dissolution model which simulates the physiological conditions in the lung and mimics the pharmacokinetic data of inhaled particles.
It is used in combination with the PreciseInhale^® exposure platform to collect the aerosolized powder on glass coverslips by simulating human breath with an automated system.

Moreover, only the respirable fraction of the dry powder (1-5 μm) should be considered in a dissolution test.

PreciseInhale^® is equipped with an induction port (IP) simulating the patient’s throat, however it does not completely separates the non-respirable fraction, leading to coarse particle collection, and thus presence in the dissolution experiment.

In this work a newly designed pre-separator (PS) was employed during particle collection as an extra impaction stage for coarse particles, aiming to investigate the influence of the particle size of the collected powder on the DissolvIt^® dissolution/absorption profiles.