Scale‐up of electrospinning technology: Applications in the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Recently, electrospinning (ES) of fibers has been shown to be an attractive strategy for drug delivery. One of the main features of ES is that a wide variety of drugs can be loaded into the fibers to improve their bioavailability, to enhance dissolution, or to achieve controlled release. Besides, ES is a continuous technology with low energy consumption, which can make it a very economic production alternative to the widely used freeze drying and spray drying. However, the low production rate of laboratory‐scaled ES has limited the industrial application of the technology so far. This article covers the various ES technologies developed for scaled‐up fiber production with an emphasis on pharmaceutically relevant examples. The methods used for increasing the productivity are complied, which is followed by a review of specific examples from literature where these technologies are utilized to produce oral drug delivery systems. The different technologies are compared in terms of their basic principles, advantages, and limitations. Finally, the different downstream processing options to prepare tablets or capsules containing the electrospun drug are covered as well. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Emerging Technologies

Core–Shell Eudragit S100 Nanofibers Prepared via Triaxial Electrospinning to Provide a Colon-Targeted Extended Drug Release

“…What makes differences are the spinneret and the corresponding numbers of syringe pumps. For a traditional single-fluid blended electrospinning, a syringe pump is exploited to quantitatively transfer the only spinnable working fluid to the monoaxial spinneret, often comprising a metal capillary [ 53 ]. For the coaxial processes, regardless of electrospinning or electrospraying, there are two pumps to simultaneously pump the core and shell working fluids to the double-layer concentric spinneret/spraying head [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ].…”

Electrospun nanofibers: A nanotechnological approach for drug delivery and dissolution optimization in poorly water-soluble drugs

“…On the other hand, the presence of polymorphism within the API can make harder the conversion to an amorphous structure, representing a disadvantage for the process [150]. According to Poller et al, a major challenge for electrospinning is the scale-up process and this issue is currently being addressed by both academic and industrial researchers [151][152][153].…”

Electrospinning: Application and Prospects for Urologic Tissue Engineering

“…Low productivity of electrospinning process (0.01-1 g/h) does not meet the requirements of high throughput production of commercial and clinical scales. Consequently, upscaling of electrospinning has been investigated through nozzle-type modifications and free surface technologies [for review, please see Vass et al (2019)].…”