Microfluidic multifunctional nanoparticle production for gene therapy

Abstract

Gene therapy is a promising research area for diseases treatments. However, the treatment success depends on the proper delivery of genetic material inside the target cells (transfection process) and it requires the development of delivery systems that are capable to deliver the genetic material inside cells and with physico-chemical properties precisely controlled. This research plan aims to develop processes to overcome the challenge in nanobiotechnology related to the production of nucleic acid delivery systems using microfluidics as a promising technology. Microfluidcs is a research field that manipulates small amount of fluids and allow the continuous flow operation in one phase and also the drop generation to be used as microreactors. Considering the continuous flow operation in one phase it will be investigated the production of liposome, chitosan and peptide nanoparticles, with nucleic acid incorporation into these carriers systems. The nanoparticles will be characterized regarding their physicochemical properties and the capacity of in vitro transfect mammalian cells. The droplet microfluidic systems are able to promote a fast fluid mixing, generating complexes with controllable particle size and polydispersity. These systems will be explored to incorporate nucleic acids into cationic liposomes and chitosan nanoparticles inside droplets formed in microchannels. The comparison of both strategies (continuous flow and droplet generation) will be carried out with productivity and physicochemical properties of the obtained nanoparticles as main parameters. This research plan has the international collaboration with National Institute of Standards and Technology, United Sates. It is expected to contribute to the development of new Microfluidic processes and pharmaceutical products for gene therapy and to raise human resources for nanobiotechnology. (AU)