Fluorescent biosensors as tools

Researchers in the School of Phar­ma­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham have been using Dolomite Microfluidic’s chips to enhance their work on drug encap­su­la­tion and ther­a­peu­tic deliv­ery. Dr Veeren Chauhan, Research Fel­low in the Advanced Mate­ri­als and Health­care Tech­nolo­gies (AMHT) group, work­ing with Dr Jonathan Aylott and Dr Amjad Selo, explained: “We have been using Dolomite chips since the end of 2017 and, since then, have con­tin­u­ous­ly man­u­fac­tured an array of uni­form­ly-sized PLGA par­ti­cles. We can fine-tune the sys­tem set-up, depend­ing on the down­stream require­ments, to pro­vide a con­sis­tent par­ti­cle shape and size, as well as con­trol drug release para­me­ters. These attrib­ut­es are key to ensur­ing the cor­rect dose of drug is main­tained, achiev­ing max­i­mum ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fit with­out unwant­ed side-effects.”

Amjad added: “We are opti­miz­ing con­di­tions to pro­duce flu­o­res­cent PLGA to act as a biosen­sor, stor­ing and releas­ing bio­log­i­cal med­i­cines depen­dant on envi­ron­men­tal changes. These nov­el par­ti­cles can detect and mon­i­tor spe­cif­ic ana­lytes in the body and, due to their flu­o­res­cent prop­er­ties, can be used to assess bio­chem­i­cal inter­ac­tions and process­es with­in cells.”

“Using Dolomite’s microflu­idic chips has sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced the inno­v­a­tive work we are able to per­form. The beau­ty of using such small chips means we can pro­duce vast quan­ti­ties of par­ti­cles, while occu­py­ing very lit­tle lab space, and can ensure a con­tin­u­ous flow of homo­ge­neous, repro­ducible par­ti­cle batch­es,” Veeren concluded.