화학공학소재연구정보센터
Chemical Engineering Journal, Vol.361, 428-438, 2019
A new approach for the stabilization of amorphous drug nanoparticles during continuous antisolvent precipitation
In this study a stabilization approach for the bottom-up production of drug nanoparticles was established and demonstrated for four commonly used drugs. The nanoparticles were produced by liquid antisolvent precipitation utilizing in-house build static mixers. The influence of the mixing conditions on the final particle size distributions was studied by variation of the energy input during precipitation. Multivalent cations of a non-toxic metal can be used to achieve superior electrostatic stabilization of the precipitated nanoparticles. For zirconium salts used as stabilizers in particular, the dependency of the resulting particle size on the pH and the salt concentration in the antisolvent was investigated. Remarkably, our approach allows the continuous production of drug nanoparticles down to a few 10 nm in diameter. A simple method to analyze the particle composition based on FTIR spectra is proposed and verified by thermogravimetric analysis. The amorphous character of the obtained particles was verified using X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry. To further demonstrate the broad applicability of our approach the solvent was varied and the stabilization applied to a different formation mechanism.