Nanoparticles instead of tablets
Nanospray for nanoparticles from medicines
ChemPort based on the materials of the Royal Society of Chemistry: Nanospray for nanodrugs
Researchers from the USA and Germany have developed a method of dry spraying of medicinal formulations, which allows to obtain particles with a size of less than 100 nm. The new technique may find application in the testing of new drugs, allowing to increase the solubility or bioavailability of the drug.
Over the past decade, compounds of increasingly complex structure (as well as more complex mixtures) have been considered as potential drug candidates, such complication usually leads to a decrease in the solubility of compounds and the impossibility of their use for therapy. In order to determine whether a new formulation can be used as a drug, tests for its solubility are carried out already at the early stages of development, however, as a rule, small quantities of samples are usually available for such samples.
One of the ways to solve this problem is to reduce the particle size of the studied drug candidate. To obtain small-sized particles, David Weitz from Harvard developed a microcapillary device made of polydimethylsiloxane. The new device includes two nozzles focusing the flow of the drug, and a third nozzle for compressed air. The new aerosol system makes it possible to obtain particles with a size of less than 100 nm.
Weitz explains that researchers from his group have tried to develop the production of nanoparticles of drugs, the size of which would facilitate the study of their bioavailability. Previously, rapid precipitation of small particles from a solution was used to obtain them, but this method is unsuccessful because small particles that have precipitated can stick together, as a result of which their sizes no longer meet the requirements. To prevent coagulation, the researchers decided to use a method that allows you to get rid of the solvent as quickly as possible, the best approach, in their opinion, could be the method of aerosol spraying.
The researchers tested the operation of the device designed by them, taking the drug danazol (danazol) as a model. The solution of danazol in an organic solvent was sprayed through the first nozzle, the precipitator was sprayed through the second nozzle, after which the resulting mixture entered the compressed air current, which contributed to the evaporation of solvents, which made it possible to obtain a highly dispersed homogeneous powder of danazol. Changing the conditions – the distance from the nozzle outlet to the powder collection area and the compressed air pressure – allows you to change the size of the resulting nanoparticles.
The new device can be used not only to produce nanoparticles, due to the spray mixing of two substances with a disconnected compressed air flow, it can be used to produce suspensions containing nanoscale particles. Currently, Weitz plans to scale the device to obtain samples in large quantities.
An early version of the article by Thiele et al. Early development drug formulation on a chip: Fabrication of nanoparticles using a microfluidic spray dryer is published on the website of the journal Lab on a Chip.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.06.2011