Grant: Idea to Innovation

""A scale-up microfluidic-based manufacturing process for the production of therapeutic lipid nanoparticles"" is a collaborative project between investigators at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Vancouver-based start-up company, Precision NanoSystems (PNI). Nanoparticles are small, with diameters of <100 nanometers (nm), which is one thousand times less than the width of a human hair. Nanoparticle are used to package and deliver drugs, diagnostics and other biological agents to cells, tissues and organs in the body. Nanoparticles use ""molecular zip codes"" to ensure the delivery of drugs to the specific location of the disease, thereby reducing toxicity to healthy cells. In essence, nanoparticles act as the ""FedEx"" for medicines and offer the potential to enable personalized medicines by delivering the right drug to the right patient at the right time. However, innovation is hampered because nanoparticles are notoriously difficult to make. PNI has developed new equipment (the ""NanoAssemblrTM"") that manufactures nanoparticles not previously possible and reduces nanoparticle development costs by up to 80%. Further, the NanoAssemblrTM solves the significant issues associated with the incumbent manufacturing methods, which require significant expertise, are sensitive to reaction conditions, are difficult to reproduce, are labour intensive, and are difficult to scale-up. In 2011, the estimated addressable nanoparticle healthcare market was $6.3 Billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) > 20% (2009 - 2014). This project will develop a scale-up NanoAssemblrTM instrument that can manufacture 20 L of nanoparticles in less than 2 hours. This is sufficient material for early-stage clinical trials and would help establish the NanoAssemblrTM as the de facto technology for the manufacture of next-generation nanoparticles.