MICROFLUIDIC BASED FABRICATIONG OF NANOPARTICLES

Microfluidics is the science of fluid flows at the microscopic scale. Small volumes of solvent, sample, and reagents flowing through micro-channels embedded in a chip, providing a new horizon of improved powerful platform for physical and biological assays.

Miniaturizing into a microfluidic device offer many advantages, among others small requirements for solvents and reagents, low cost and faster parallel analysis.

One of the projects we are focusing at the lab is trying to develop new techniques with these useful microdevices templates and overcome a central challenge in the development of new modern anti-cancer drugs nowadays – synthesis of monodisperse nanoparticles.

PLGA poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) has attracted considerable attention due to its attractive biodegradability property and its one of the most successfully developed nano-particles.

To synthesize particles with this process, we used two different types of microfluidic chips (T Junction and Focused flow) that able to create PLGA emulsions with a highly controlled structure and uniform droplets, which are then solidified to produce particles.

By varying flow rates, polymer concentration and polymer type we are able to optimize the size, decrease polydispersity index, and as a result to improve the PK and PD characteristics.

The Microfluidics may find applications for modern development and optimization of polymeric nanoparticles in the newly emerging field of nanomedicine