Authors
Christina Petschacher, Andreas Eitzlmayr, Maximilian Besenhard, Julian Wagner, Jan Barthelmes, Andreas Bernkop-Schnürch, Johannes G Khinast, Andreas Zimmer
Publication date
2013
Journal
Polymer chemistry
Volume
4
Issue
7
Pages
2342-2352
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Description
Scale-up of nanoparticle batch productions continues to be a major challenge in the pharmaceutical nanotechnology. Continuously operating microreactors have great potential to circumvent the scale-up difficulties. In this work a passive microreactor was used for the first time for the electrostatic self-assembly of biodegradable, mucoadhesive thiomer–protamine nanoparticles for drug delivery. The influence of three different parameters (the overall flow rate, the educt mass ratio and the molecular weight of the thiomer) on the particle characteristics was tested for the microreactor production and compared to the results of a successful 1 ml-batch reaction. As the flow rate increased (2, 5, 9, 16 ml min−1), the particle sizes and the polydispersity indexes decreased. In addition, the protamine : 5 kDa thiomer binding ratio and hence the zeta potential, as a measure of the suspension's stability, increased to >+40 mV due …
Scholar articles
C Petschacher, A Eitzlmayr, M Besenhard, J Wagner… - Polymer chemistry, 2013