A microfluidic toolkit for drug delivery particle discovery

Automation and high throughput screens are used in the pharma industry to manufacture and test massive numbers of compounds in the therapeutic development process. Drugs are chosen to cover large areas of chemical diversity to broadly probe biological function without earlier assumptions. Although this has proven hugely successful in the discovery of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), such concepts are currently not used to develop soft matter drug delivery vehicles (liposomes, LNPs etc) themselves. There is huge scope for innovation in terms of the architectures of the delivery particle themselves, driven by the lack of technologies to manufacture libraries of such structures.

In this project we will develop microfluidic platforms to create massive libraries of different lipid NP formulations, morphology, charge, sizes, amphiphile composition, and encapsulated genetic material type. Building on this, we will develop integrated lab-on-chip platforms to test their ability to deliver genetic material to cells via in vitro assays. In doing so, we aim to establish the infrastructure for a new frontier in high-throughput manufacture and screening of soft nanoparticle libraries. We use this as a basis for a high-throughput screening platform, where we will screen the nanoparticle itself (as opposed to the active ingredient). This offers a conceptual shift from existing approaches that rely on one-by-one rational design and manufacture of particle types. Together with our industrial collaborators (AstraZeneca) we will apply our technology to scientific priorities of the pharmaceutical sector. Once established, our platforms can be applied to *any* application where soft matter particle discovery is needed, including in drug/vaccine therapeutic delivery applications and in biosensing.