MFIC to bring microfluidics to drug formulation

The new device is a product of the US company's Microfluidics Reaction Technology (MRT) development program and works by creating nanosuspensions that can then be easily used in drug formulation. The new technology was presented at the Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) Nanotech conference 2007 in Santa Clara, California, US, earlier this week. MFIC demonstrated the potential of the new technique for a series of drugs with masses ranging between 220 and 750 AMU (atomic mass units). "The advent of MRT could potentially unlock uncounted drugs, vaccines and drug delivery systems that to date could not be formulated​," said Bob Bruno, CEO of MFIC Corp. ​Bruno anticipates introducing a range of equipment to enable the MRT process in the fourth quarter of the year, "providing our customers with an additional effective and efficient solution for the creation of promising, new therapeutics".​ Conventional "top down" processes take a bulk product and reduce the size of the particles by processes such as wet-milling, homogenisation and micronisation. These processes give inconsistent results that can be problematic for batch to batch consistency and when making drugs for inhalation. The MRT uses a "bottom up" approach that pumps the drug containing solvent and anti-solvent at each other within a 'Microfluidizer' reaction chamber at velocities of up to 400m/s. The reaction chamber provides precise control of the feed rate and mixing location to produce uniform, optimally-sized nanoparticles by solvent, anti-solvent and surfactant crystallisation techniques. "Through the use of MRT, MFIC engineers were able to produce nanosuspensions for several drugs,"​ said Dr. Thomai Panagiotou, vice president of R&D at MFIC. "Importantly, MRT was demonstrated to be more effective in producing nanosuspensions than standard, particle size reducing methods​."​