Online Size Analysis of Nanoparticles benefits

Nanomedicine research has grown quickly during the past few decades with much of the focus placed on drug delivery. Nanoparticles provide benefits such as reducing toxicity and side effects. Controlling the size of these nanoparticles is critical. While the majority of the particle size measurements of this product is in the lab, it is now possible to make these measurements online (or at-line) in the manufacturing environment.

The PSS Nicomp 380 Online system has been installed in several customer manufacturing operations that track particle size during production runs. The online system removes a sample from the process, dilutes the sample to avoid multiple scattering effects, measures the sample, and then   repeats the procedure. The complete measurement cycle is approximately 2 minutes, providing continuous particle size information to the process engineers monitoring the manufacturing operation.

The PSS online DLS system was installed downstream of a high pressure homogenizer at BIND Therapeutics in Cambrdge, MA and set up such that it can grab an emulsion sample from the process stream every ~2 minutes.  The relationship between particle size (left y-axis) and homogenizer pressure (right y-axis) was established - see below.

The next experiment had initial size readings ~5 - 7 nm under the target size and hence a pressure adjustment was made (1,000 psig decrease).  At later time-points the mean particle size increased by ~5 -10 nm as expected, see below.

Many nanoparticle production operations could be monitored continuously using the Nicomp online DLS system.

Download the online DLS application Note 718 Nanaoparticles for Drug Delivery

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