Abstract
Drug delivery systems (DDSs) have great potential for improving the treatment of several diseases, especially microbial infections and cancers. However, the formulation procedures of DDSs remain challenging, especially at the nanoscale. Reducing batch-to-batch variation and enhancing production rate are some of the essential requirements for accelerating the translation of DDSs from a small scale to an industrial level. Microfluidic technologies have emerged as an alternative to the conventional bench methods to address these issues. By providing precise control over the fluid flows and rapid mixing, microfluidic systems can be used to fabricate and engineer different types of DDSs with specific properties for efficient delivery of a wide range of drugs and genetic materials. This review discusses the principles of controlled rapid mixing that have been employed in different microfluidic strategies for producing DDSs. Moreover, the impact of the microfluidic device design and parameters on the type and properties of DDS formulations was assessed, and recent applications in drug and gene delivery were also considered.
Highlights
In the past decade, enormous advancement in the field of nanotechnology was achieved to produce nanoformulations for drug and gene delivery.[1−3] Employing this nanotechnological advancement in nanomedicine opened doors for improving some of the most challenging therapies such as cancer treatments
Based on the nature and composition of the fabricated drug delivery systems (DDSs), the nanostructures are formed by self-assembly, emulsification, or precipitation.[11−17] One of the main considerations in formulating different types of polymers or active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) is to maintain the dimensions of the designed particles within a range of 100−300 nm, which is desirable for pharmaceutical applications.[18]
The recent innovations and developments in microfluidic technology have offered a better alternative to many conventical techniques for designing and producing DDSs
Summary
Enormous advancement in the field of nanotechnology was achieved to produce nanoformulations for drug and gene delivery.[1−3] Employing this nanotechnological advancement in nanomedicine opened doors for improving some of the most challenging therapies such as cancer treatments. Despite the great potential that nanosized DDSs possess in vitro, they demonstrated slow translation to clinical applications This limitation is due to challenges such as the production of large quantities and reproducibility of prepared nanostructures of the DDSs.[21] Many studies have shed more light on the mixing kinetics in order to control the properties of the fabricated DDSs such as size, polydispersity, and the API encapsulation efficiency.[22−25] Among several mixing techniques, microfluidic systems have received the most attention due to their ability to control mixing, low running cost, and amenability to modifications.[26] In comparison to bulk production methods, microfluidic synthesis/formulation of single or multicomponent nanoparticles (NPs) has shown higher controllability and reproducibility.[27−29] The newly developed microfluidic devices provided a platform for preparing different formulations of Received: September 9, 2020 Revised: November 12, 2020 Accepted: November 13, 2020 Published: November 20, 2020. The challenges for the industrial application of microfluidics for DDS fabrication were included
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