Nanoprecipitation Techniques for Drug Delivery Systems
Summary
Nanoprecipitation encompasses a suite of bottom-up fabrication methods in which a drug and carrier polymer, dissolved in a water-miscible organic solvent, are rapidly mixed with an antisolvent to trigger controlled nucleation and growth of nanoparticles. By tuning parameters such as solvent/antisolvent ratio, polymer concentration, mixing intensity and stabiliser identity, it is possible to control particle size, drug loading, surface properties and release kinetics. Variants include batch drop-wise addition, microfluidic mixing, phase separation-induced precipitation and continuous processes such as Flash NanoPrecipitation (FNP). These techniques offer high encapsulation efficiencies, reduced carrier mass, enhanced stability of amorphous drug dispersions and improved bioavailability. Scalability is achieved via engineered mixers (for example multi-inlet vortex mixers) and continuous downstream processing (spray drying or lyophilisation), enabling translation from laboratory discovery to pilot or industrial scale. Applications span oncology, infectious diseases, central-nervous-system disorders and global-health priorities where targeted delivery, controlled release and dose sparing are critical.
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Nanoprecipitation Techniques for Drug Delivery Systems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in nanoprecipitation techniques for drug delivery systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Nanoprecipitation: A technique in which a polymer and drug solution is rapidly mixed with an antisolvent to induce supersaturation, nucleation and particle formation.
Flash NanoPrecipitation (FNP): A continuous, stabiliser-directed rapid mixing process that yields uniform, amorphous nanoparticles via controlled antisolvent precipitation.
Encapsulation efficiency: The fraction of initial drug mass successfully entrapped within nanoparticles, expressed as a percentage of total drug input.
Multi-inlet vortex mixer (MIVM): A device with multiple fluid inlets designed to achieve rapid micromixing under high Reynolds number conditions, facilitating scalable nanoparticle synthesis.
References
- Phase separation‐induced nanoprecipitation for making polymer nanoparticles with high drug loading. Aggregate (2023).
- Exploring Various Techniques for the Chemical and Biological Synthesis of Polymeric Nanoparticles. Nanomaterials (2022).
- Polymer Concentration Maximizes Encapsulation Efficiency in Electrohydrodynamic Mixing Nanoprecipitation. Frontiers in Nanotechnology (2021).
- Design of a Small-Scale Multi-Inlet Vortex Mixer for Scalable Nanoparticle Production and Application to the Encapsulation of Biologics by Inverse Flash NanoPrecipitation. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (2018).
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