Journal
ENGINEERING IN LIFE SCIENCES
Volume 17, Issue 1, Pages 58-70Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/elsc.201600100
Keywords
Compartmentalization; Nanobiotechnology; Polymersomes; Process engineering; Scale-up
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Funding
- German Federal ministry of Education and Research [031A178]
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Polymersomes have some fundamental advantages compared to their liposomal counterparts. Due to the increased stability of the polymeric membrane, polymersomes are intended to be reasonably applicable as carrier-systems and universal reaction compartments for diverse medical and biotechnological applications. Regardless of the application area, suitable methods to produce large vesicle quantities in a controlled and cost-effective manner have to be developed to put polymersome technology into action at the industrial scale. In this work, the amphiphilic triblock copolymer poly(2-methyloxazoline)(15)-poly(dimethylsiloxane)(68) poly(2-methyloxazoline)(15) was formed into uniform polymersomes. A recently established production process, based on the use of miniaturized stirred-tank reactors at the milliliter-scale (12 mL), was successfully scaled-up to the liter-scale (1.5 L) based on solid process engineering parameters. Dynamic light scattering measurements show that using standard propeller stirrers with a dimensionless diameter d D-1 >= 0.65 in an unbaffled stirred-tank reactor led to a narrow particle size distribution when providing a Froude number of Fr = 6.52 at the same time. Polymersomes with a mean diameter of 180 nm and a low polydispersity index (PDI<0.2) were generated within about 1 h in one single production step. Thus, this work provides the fundamental basis for further scale-up purposes, regarding polymersome production in stirred-tank reactors at the industrial scale.
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