AutoDropProd · Development of a commercially-viable system for the automatic generation of high-throughput well defined single and double microdroplets

Development of a commercially-viable system for the automatic generation of high-throughput well defined single and double microdroplets

Emulsions of microdroplets have been used in a wide range of applications especially in pharmaceutical and biosciences, cosmetics and food industries. However, most of the emulsions used consist of varying size (polydisperse) droplets. Polydispersity is particularly problematic in the pharmaceutical industry, where irregular drug quantities encapsulated in polydisperse drug-loaded droplets and particles can cause an initial burst of drug release in vivo, which can lead to undesirable cytotoxic effects. On the other hand, monodisperse emulsions can be produced, manipulated and analyzed using microfluidics. This is achieved by producing emulsions in micrometer sized channels in a droplet-by-droplet manner at kHz rates. Although this method produces droplets with size variations of less than 5%, for the pharmaceutical industry higher droplet size uniformity level is needed to achieve better control of drug encapsulation and release. Additionally, microfluidic approach at its current state, which is based on manual or semi manual droplet production, is not suitable for industrial applications, where high amounts of emulsion with the non-stop protocols are needed. To achieve this, physical parameters of droplets such as size, frequency and monodispersity has to be detected, monitored and regulated very rapidly for the long periods of time without human interaction. The most widely applied method to monitor physical parameters of the droplets such as droplet size and frequency, is the manual measurement. However, it does not advance us to automatization. Other existing methods are based on optical, electrical or even Artificial Intelligence (AI) droplet recognition. However, the low throughput or increased complexity of the systems, is not viable option for industrial applications. Thus, in this project it was designed and built a fully automatic, high throughput, real time droplet detection system which can produce monodisperse droplets and control their size for very long periods of time using a fast response pressure pump. This system solves two major problems concerning microdroplet emulsions – it ensures the conformity of droplet size and produces the emulsions at industrial levels without human intervention, making it the best option for scientific environment as well as for the industrial application.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union