Focused Ultrasound as a Scalable and Contact-Free Method to Manufacture Protein-Loaded PLGA Nanoparticles.

Purpose: Although nanomaterials are under investigation for a very broad range of medical applications, only a small fraction of these are already commercialized or in clinical development. A major challenge for the translation of nanomedicines into the clinic is the missing scalability of the available lab scale preparation methods and, ultimately, non-identical samples during early and late research.

Methods: Protein-loaded PLGA nanoparticles using focused ultrasound in an emulsion solvent diffusion method were prepared in different batch sizes to evaluate achievable mean size, protein loading, and yield.

Results: Using the same equipment, nanoparticles could be prepared in batch sizes from 1 mg to 2.5 g. Size and yield were directly controllable by the amount of incident energy with good reproducibility. The nanoparticles displayed similar mean size, protein loading, and nanoparticle yield in batch sizes over three orders of magnitude. A scalable purification method based on diafiltration was established.

Conclusions: The proposed method enables for feasibility studies during early research using just a small amount of polymer and protein, while at the same time it allows for larger scale production at later stages. As the proposed method further relies on contact-free energy transmission, it is especially suited for the preparation of clinical research samples.