2018/05/15 by Chester E. Markwalter, Robert K. Prud'homme, Robert K. Prud’homme · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Electrohydrodynamics and Fluid Dynamics #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.xphs.2018.05.003
Flash NanoPrecipitation is a scalable approach to generate polymeric nanoparticles using rapid micromixing in specially designed geometries such as a confined impinging jets mixer or a Multi-Inlet Vortex Mixer (MIVM). A major limitation of formulation screening using the MIVM is that a single run requires tens of milligrams of the therapeutic. To overcome this, we have developed a scaled-down version of the MIVM, requiring as little as 0.2 mg of therapeutic, for formulation screening. The redesigned mixer can then be attached to pumps for scale-up of the identified formulation. It was shown that Reynolds number allowed accurate scaling between the 2 MIVM designs. The utility of the small-scale MIVM for formulation development was demonstrated through the encapsulation of a number of hydrophilic macromolecules using inverse Flash NanoPrecipitation with target loadings as high as 50% by mass.