1 Department of Electrical Engineering, École de technologie supérieure, 1100 Notre Dame-West, Montreal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada.
2 School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Av. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501 Sur, Monterrey 64849, N.L., Mexico.
3 Department of Engineering, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro Cerro de las Campanas s/n, Santiago de Querétaro 76010, Qro., México.
4 System on Chip Center, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE.
5 Department of Biological Sciences, Université du Québec à Montréal, 141 Président-Kennedy, Montreal, QC H2X 1Y4, Canada.
6 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada.

Surface Response Based Modeling of Liposome Characteristics in a Periodic Disturbance Mixer.

Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Feb 25;11(3):

Authors: López RR, Ocampo I, Sánchez LM, Alazzam A, Bergeron KF, Camacho-León S, Mounier C, Stiharu I, Nerguizian V

Abstract

Liposomes nanoparticles (LNPs) are vesicles that encapsulate drugs, genes, and imaging labels for advanced delivery applications. Control and tuning liposome physicochemical characteristics such as size, size distribution, and zeta potential are crucial for their functionality. Liposome production using micromixers has shown better control over liposome characteristics compared with classical approaches. In this work, we used our own designed and fabricated Periodic Disturbance Micromixer (PDM). We used Design of Experiments (DoE) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to statistically model the relationship between the Total Flow Rate (TFR) and Flow Rate Ratio (FRR) and the resulting liposomes physicochemical characteristics. TFR and FRR effectively control liposome size in the range from 52 nm to 200 nm. In contrast, no significant effect was observed for the TFR on the liposomes Polydispersity Index (PDI); conversely, FRR around 2.6 was found to be a threshold between highly monodisperse and low polydispersed populations. Moreover, it was shown that the zeta potential is independent of TFR and FRR. The developed model presented on the paper enables to pre-establish the experimental conditions under which LNPs would likely be produced within a specified size range. Hence, the model utility was demonstrated by showing that LNPs were produced under such conditions.

PMID: 32106424 [PubMed]