PLGA-PEG polymers from PolySciTech used in development of acoustic-microfluidic nanoparticles

 

Nanoparticles are an excellent means to deliver poorly soluble or difficult to target drug molecules to bodily systems. There are many methods to generate particles however the use of microfluidics provides for improved control of the manufacturing process. Recently, researchers at Duke University (North Carolina, USA) used PLGA-PEG-COOH (AI056, AI184, AI080) and PLGA-NH2 (AI017) from PolySciTech (www.polyscitech.com) to develop an acoustic-microfluidic method for nanoparticle generation. This research holds promise to improve drug delivery methodologies in the future. Read more: Zhao, Shuaiguo, Po-Hsun Huang, Heying Zhang, Joseph Rich, Hunter Bachman, Jennifer Ye, Wenfen Zhang et al. "Fabrication of tunable, high-molecular-weight polymeric nanoparticles via ultrafast acoustofluidic micromixing." Lab on a Chip (2021). https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/lc/d1lc00265a

“Abstract: High-molecular-weight polymeric nanoparticles are critical to increasing the loading efficacy and tuning the release profile of targeted molecules for medical diagnosis, imaging, and therapeutics. Although a number of microfluidic approaches have attained reproducible nanoparticle synthesis, it is still challenging to fabricate nanoparticles from high-molecular-weight polymers in a size and structure-controlled manner. In this work, an acoustofluidic platform is developed to synthesize size-tunable, high-molecular-weight (>45 kDa) poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)-b-poly(ethylene glycol) (PLGA–PEG) nanoparticles without polymer aggregation by exploiting the characteristics of complete and ultrafast mixing. Moreover, the acoustofluidic approach achieves two features that have not been achieved by existing microfluidic approaches: (1) multi-step (≥2) sequential nanoprecipitation in a single device, and (2) synthesis of core–shell structured PLGA–PEG/lipid nanoparticles with high molecular weights. The developed platform expands microfluidic potential in nanomaterial synthesis, where high-molecular-weight polymers, multiple reagents, or sequential nanoprecipitations are needed.”