Systematic Approaches to Scale-up of Biocompatible Drug Delivery Nanoparticles for High-Rate Production

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The research objective of this award is to explore systematic methods to scale-up the high-rate production of a novel and robust lipid-coated polymeric drug delivery nanoparticle and to understand the principles underlying the large-scale nanoparticle fabrication process. The approach taken will be to develop and utilize a stirred-tank reactor and a multi-inlet vortex reactor to pursue the target large-scale and high-rate production of the drug delivery nanoparticles. Both the batch mixing theory and the continuous mixing theory will be studied for understanding and optimizing the nanoparticle fabrication process. All synthesized nanoparticles will be systematically characterized regarding particle size, surface charge and morphology, drug loading yield, drug release kinetics, and stability in serum by a series of analytical tools to evaluate their reproducibility and scalability. If successful, the benefits of this research will include both increased scientific understanding and technological developments on both nanoparticle drug delivery and nanomanufacturing. This research can push forward the frontier of current nanomedicine research by providing therapeutically relevant quantities of drug-loaded nanoparticles for possible clinical use. The experimental and theoretical findings from this study can be generalized for high-throughput production of other nanoscaled agents and can contribute to the general understandings of nanomanufacturing. Moreover, this project will highly integrate research and education activities. The educational efforts include recruitment of underrepresented undergraduate students working in the laboratory on the project, recruitment of high school students, with an emphasis on minority summer interns to perform 4~8 weeks of research, and development of new courses on nanomedicine and nanofabrication for both undergraduate and graduate students to further disseminate the findings from the research.