Scalable, high-throughput drug delivery platform using cell-membrane coating technology for nanoparticles

This technology is a system to efficiently generate uniform cell membrane-coated nanoparticles for use as biomimetic carriers for drug and gene delivery.

Unmet Need: Robust method for uniform membrane-lipid coating of nanomaterials

Biomimetic materials, made to imitate biological structures, have numerous wide-reaching applications in nanotechnology, drug delivery, and basic research technologies. Current methods to coat nanocarriers with cell membranes involve extrusion and sonication. These methods are tedious and time-consuming, and are further limited by batch-to-batch variabilities, as well as difficulties associated with scale-up. Versatile, reproducible and scalable methods to produce uniformly membrane-lipid coated nanoparticles are necessary for research and clinical translation of these biomimetic vehicles.

The Technology: Cell-membrane coating of nanomaterials using flash nanocomplexation

This technology is a method enabling rapid and facile membrane-lipid coating of nanoparticles. It takes advantage of electrostatic interactions, which rapidly homogenize charged nanoparticle cores with negatively charged cell membrane fragments, to achieve uniformly coated nanoparticles. This technology can provide a coating thickness ranging from 5-20 nm by varying the flow rate and mass ratios of the different fragment mixes. Furthermore, this method can be broadly applicable to many different bio- and nanomaterials used in the industry today, including silica, polymers, DNA polyplexes, and drug nanocrystals. This technology is a standardized, facile, and robust nanomaterial membrane coating system which has the potential to overcome the current challenges in designing efficient drug delivery systems.

This technology has been validated against bulk-sonication, a commonly applied method for coating nanomaterials.

Applications:

• Coating of biomimetic nanoparticles for use in research, immunotherapy, gene and drug delivery
• Uniform chemical dispersion and mixing (i.e. preventing particle aggregation in chemical manufacturing plants)
• Uniform polymer coating for photolithographic applications in integrated circuit technologies
• Nanotechnology and self-assembly
• Research tool for studying cellular processes with nanoparticles

Advantages:

• Scalable for research and clinical purposes
• Produces uniformly coated nanoparticles
• Can use nanoparticles ranging from 50 nm to 2 um with charge varying from -50 mV to +50 mV
• Capable of coating positively charged nanoparticles
• Superior in performance compared to bulk-sonication with silica particles
• Can use cell membranes from various cell lines
• Allows cores to be comprised of various biomaterials (i.e. silica, biodegradable polymer, DNA-polymer polyplex, chemotherapeutic nanocrystals)

Lead Inventor:

Kam W. Leong, Ph.D.

Patent Information:

Patent Pending

Tech Ventures Reference:

• IR CU20253

• Licensing Contact: Joan Martinez