Unlocking the capability of optical microcavity analysis to measure nanoparticle refractive index

The last three decades have seen the widespread adoption and industrialisation of nanoparticles serving applications in many technology sectors, including healthcare, energy production, manufacturing industry and agriculture. In the pharmaceutical sector, at the heart of this progress is the ability to fill otherwise inert particle materials with highly toxic anti-cancer drugs or genetic materials and/or functionalise the surface to both mask their presence from the human immune response and to better target the release of the "payload" at a particular organ, tumour or cellular component. These developments have led to a series of scientific breakthroughs in the field of advanced therapeutics by using nanocarriers to deliver drugs where it is needed in the body and reducing therapeutic index, i.e. toxicity to healthy organ and tissues.

However, manufacturing of such "advanced therapies" is challenging as it requires fine tools to scrutinise nanoparticles 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Oxford HighQ has developed a new technique providing the ability to characterise the composition of nanoparticles through their optical properties, i.e. more specifically their refractive indices. One could use this parameter to measure on a particle-by-particle basis the amount of therapeutic molecules loaded within/on a nanoparticle carrier. The limited footprint, ease-of-use and potential for this technique to be built in-line within a manufacturing process makes it particularly attractive to the pharmaceutical industry. This project will employ the expertise of the UK's National Physical Laboratory to design and manufacture highly engineered materials that can be used to fully characterise the capabilities of this new technology, and provide facilities to rigorously validate this new measurement against orthogonal analytical methods. The latter tends to be bulky, time consuming and expensive methods, which highlight the need for a more agile technological platform for rapid screening of materials and quality assurance purposes. The joint team will focus its efforts in developing a series of demonstrations to unlock the true potential of Oxford HighQ's technology. For example, the project will output an application note directly relevant to advanced therapeutics that will help promoting out new technology in the pharmaceutical sector.