Microfluidic-assisted fabrication of carriers for controlled drug delivery

Abstract

The microfluidic technique has brought unique opportunities toward the full control over the production processes for drug delivery carriers, owing to the miniaturisation of the fluidic environment. In comparison to the conventional batch methods, the microfluidic setup provides a range of advantages, including the improved controllability of material characteristics, as well as the precisely controlled release profiles of payloads. This review gives an overview of different fluidic principles used in the literature to produce either polymeric microparticles or nanoparticles, focusing on the materials that could have an impact on drug delivery. We also discuss the relations between the particle size and size distribution of the obtained carriers, and the design and configuration of the microfluidic setups. Overall, the use of microfluidic technologies brings exciting opportunities to expand the body of knowledge in the field of controlled drug delivery and great potential to clinical translation of drug delivery systems.

Microfluidics for Production of Particles: Mechanism, Methodology, and Applications

“…The adaptation of microfluidics to the production of microsized systems has become more popular since the first research work made more than 10 years ago . The main reasons of the adoption of this technology stem from the homogeneity of the emulsions and the high degree of control over the process . The control over the whole production process is possible due to the properties of the fluids in the microfluidic channels.…”

“…For single‐phase flow facilitated NPs production, as discussed in Section , the chip geometry is majorly composed by coflow, whereas multiple geometries have been designed for microparticles production, and the mechanisms of droplet formation in microfluidics are generally dependent on the type of chip, its characteristics, and the attributes of the fluids. The different chip geometries exploited in the development of droplet‐based emulsions and microparticles have been reviewed elsewhere . Briefly, as presented in Figure , the most commonly employed geometries in 2D are T‐ and Y‐junctions, while for the 3D design, flow focusing, coflow, and different combinations of the previous for the production of double emulsions …”

“…(h) Microfluidic channel configuration for producing Janus particles. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2017, Royal Society of Chemistry.…”

“…The first examples of applications for the microdroplets have been in the development of vesicles or solid microparticles for drug delivery . Vesicles (e.g., polymerosomes and liposomes) can be defined as an enclosure of fluid surrounded by a bilayer of amphiphilic molecules .…”

Experimental and numerical study on a novel microfluidic method to fabricate curcumin loaded calcium alginate microfibres

“…[1][2][3] These advantages include less consumption of materials, fewer toxic effects on the environment based on a lower need for large amounts of chemicals, promising in vitro results regarding the perfect resemblance of in vivo environments, and less cost. [4][5][6] During the last decade, microfluidic devices perform a prominent role in several studies, for instance, the separation of proteins or pollutants, [7,8] single cell studies, [9,10] the synthesis of organic compounds, [11] the production of drug loaded carriers in different shapes for nano/micro scale, [12][13][14] fabrication of cell culture scaffolds, [15,16] and cancer-therapy. [17,18] Indeed, the application of microfluidic systems is extensive from medical research to wastewater treatment and environmental studies.…”