microASSIST: microfluidic approach to produce drug loaded microspheres for assisted cell therapy

Cell therapy has attracted increasing attention as a promising treatment strategy for a multitude of diseases such as diabetes, lung diseases, ischemic heart disease, cancer and others. Sustained release polymers have been widely investigated as tools to assist such therapies, but suffer from a lack of industrial scale production methods. Our goal is to create a microASSIST platform for the production of micron-sized PLGA spheres that can be used for the development of various slow-release applications using a microfluidics approach. In this context we are currently optimizing the production of glucocorticoid (GC) loaded microspheres as a strategy to engineer beta cell implants and to improve beta cell engraftment in type 1 diabetes. GCs are strong anti-inflammatory compounds but they also have been shown to promote beta cell proliferation and differentiation. PLGAs (poly-lactic-co-glycolide) hold EMA approval as drug delivery systems for parenteral administration under form of micro- or nanospheres, and it are ideal biodegradable polymers as they are easily processed into a final sterile product, they show no inflammation or toxic responses and they are fully resorbed by hydrolysis after fulfilling their purpose. We are currently comparing the characteristics of GC-loaded microspheres produced using an innovative microfluidics setup to spheres produced via a conventional mixing method. Conventional mixing results in highly polydisperse spheres with uncontrollable size, while microfluidics enables production of monodisperse particles of a predetermined size (CV < 5%). Comparative analysis of the release kinetics, biodegradability and biological effects in diabetes models is ongoing. We are also developing methods to upscale microfluidics production to industrial volumes.