Multistage microfluidic assisted Co-Delivery platform for dual-agent facile sequential encapsulation

Area of Science:

• Nanomedicine
• Materials Science
• Chemical Engineering

Background:

• Integrating multiple therapeutic agents in one nano-drug carrier is challenging due to diverse physicochemical properties.
• Effective anti-tumor therapies require advanced drug delivery systems capable of handling complex drug combinations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel multi-stage microfluidic platform for sequential co-encapsulation of drugs with disparate physicochemical properties.
• To synthesize and characterize hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs) loaded with various drug combinations.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a multi-stage microfluidic TrH chip for sequential nano-precipitation.
• Synthesized hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs) loaded with paclitaxel (PTX)-simvastatin (SV), PTX-lenvatinib (LV), and SV-LV.
• Characterized HNPs for structure, particle size, encapsulation efficiency, and drug loading efficiency.

Main Results:

• Achieved core-shell structured HNPs with uniform particle size distribution, surpassing conventional methods.
• Demonstrated nearly 100% encapsulation efficiency for dual-drug loading across various ratios.
• Quantified high drug loading efficiencies for PTX-SV/HNPs (14.97%), PTX-LV/HNPs (16.58%), and SV-LV/HNPs (19.21%).
• Confirmed sequential drug release (SV and PTX) from PTX-SV/HNPs in vitro.
• Showcased superior cytotoxicity of PTX-SV/HNPs against HepG2 cells compared to individual drugs.

Conclusions:

• The multi-stage microfluidic platform effectively co-encapsulates drugs with significant physicochemical differences.
• Developed HNPs offer a robust strategy for advanced multi-drug delivery in nanomedicine.
• This approach holds significant potential for enhancing anti-tumor therapies.