Ashlee Brunaugh, PhD, PharmD
Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences
College of Pharmacy
1007 E Huron St
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1628
4220 Pharm
Role Overview and Bio
I study how complex biological environments — airway mucus, microbial biofilms, and necrotic lesions — govern the transport and fate of inhaled therapeutics. My lab develops experimental platforms, engineered formulations, and transport models to understand how drugs interact with these barriers and to design interventions that account for them. We integrate solid-state formulation, aerosol engineering, microbiology, and transport physics to build inhaled drug products for chronic respiratory infections, with a focus on antibiotic synergy, mucus barrier modulation, and inhaled biologics. I trained as both a clinical pharmacist (PharmD, UT Austin 2016) and pharmaceutical scientist (PhD, UT Austin 2020), and established the University of Michigan’s first respiratory drug delivery laboratory in the College of Pharmacy in 2021.
Highlights
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First respiratory drug delivery lab at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy Research focus: how mucus, biofilms, and diseased tissue govern whether inhaled drugs work or fail Integrates formulation engineering, microbiology, and transport physics Builds open-source tools for the inhalation science community NIH, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and PhRMA Foundation funded
Research Interests
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Inhaled drug delivery and aerosol science Drug transport through biological barriers (mucus, biofilm, necrotic tissue)
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Antibiotic synergy and combination therapy for chronic lung infections Particle engineering (spray drying, milling, amorphous solid dispersions)
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Mucus barrier physics and modulation Predictive transport modeling for inhaled therapeutics Respiratory infection model development
Awards
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2022 UC San Diego Raising Advancement and Parity for Infectious Disease Researchers (RAPID) program, UC San Diego / NIAID
Selected Publications
- Romero-Gonzalez M et al. Colistin-stabilized antisolvent precipitation enables engineering of microcrystalline niclosamide for inhalable composite powders. Int J Pharm, 2026.
- Xia G et al. A distribution-based metric for quantifying dispersibility in dry powder inhalers. Pharmaceutics, 2026.
- Romero-Gonzalez M et al. Physiologically informed in vitro framework reveals context-dependent combinatory activity of niclosamide–colistin against Gram-negative bacteria. J Antimicrob Chemother, 80(11): 2958–2969, 2025.
- Romero-Gonzalez M et al. Strategies to overcome undesired physicochemical changes in particle engineering for inhalation. KONA Powder Part J, 2024:2025008.
- Brunaugh AD et al. Respirable clofazimine particles produced by air jet milling technique are efficacious in treatment of BALB/c mice with chronic M. tuberculosis infection. Antimicrob Agents Chemother, 2022:e00186-22.
- Brunaugh AD et al. Identification of stability constraints in the particle engineering of an inhaled monoclonal antibody dried powder. J Pharm Sci, 111(2): 403–416, 2022.
- Brunaugh AD et al. Development and evaluation of inhalable composite niclosamide-lysozyme particles. PLoS One, 16(2): e0246803, 2021