Abstract
Biomaterial aerogel fabrication by freeze-drying must be further improved to reduce the costs of lengthy freeze-drying cycles and to avoid the formation of spongy cryogels and collapse of the aerogel structures. Residual water content is a critical quality attribute of the freeze-dried product, which can be monitored in-line with near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Predictive models of NIR have not been previously applied for biomaterials and the models were mostly focused on the prediction of only one formulation at a time. We recorded NIR spectra of different nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) hydrogel formulations during the secondary drying and set up a partial least square regression model to predict their residual water contents. The model can be generalized to measure residual water of formulations with different NFC concentrations and the excipients, and the NFC fiber concentrations and excipients can be separated with the principal component analysis. Our results provide valuable information about the freeze-drying of biomaterials and aerogel fabrication, and how NIR spectroscopy can be utilized in the optimization of residual water content.
Highlights
Novel drug delivery systems and treatments are ever-increasingly needed
We showed the suitability of NIR spectroscopy for monitoring of manufacturing of biomaterial aerogels by freeze-drying and predicted their residual water content during secondary drying with partial least square (PLS) models
We showed that NIR spectroscopy detects the residual water content, a critical quality attribute of freezedried aerogels, of multicomponent nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) aerogel formulations during secondary drying of freeze-drying, and we built PLS regression models which predict accurately their residual water content
Summary
Novel drug delivery systems and treatments are ever-increasingly needed. Biomaterials, such as hydrogels or extracellular vesicles, offer versatile solutions for drug delivery, drug discovery, or tissue engi neering (Cabeza et al, 2020; Cascone and Lamberti, 2020). Natural biomaterials are appreciated for biomedical applications due to their biocompatibility, renewability, and biodegradability (George et al, 2019). One approach to utilize natural biomaterials for drug de livery or tissue engineering is to fabricate them as aerogels (GarcíaGonzalez et al, 2021; Veres et al, 2015). Concerning the drug delivery and biomed ical approaches, aerogels can be utilized for example for controlled drug release, to provide scaffolds for cell colonization, or wound healing (Blasi-Romero et al, 2021; Grenier et al, 2019; Nagy et al, 2019)
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