Lab-on-a-chip preparation routes for organic nanomaterials for drug delivery

Medical products are experiencing increasing challenges in terms of price and margin pressure, speed to market, increased manufacturing complexity, and more stringent regulatory compliance. In this framework, microfluidic-based technologies and processes are revolutionizing the way we obtain products today. They meet the demand for increasingly sophisticated, higher quality, and rigorously regulated medical products, and beyond allows highly personalized custom devices. Indeed, they set out the concepts for how companies can achieve faster innovation and increase efficiencies across the value chain and, in comparison with the well-established technologies and processes, lab-on-a-chip route can be mobile and connected addressing solutions in innovative areas such as patient-specific devices and diagnostic testing, driving directly to the world of the Industry 4.0. This chapter introduces the most representative and promising microfluidic-based strategies for the production of nanoparticles as drug delivery system: hydrodynamic flow focusing for nanoprecipitation and self-assembly of block copolymers. It starts by presenting the nanoprecipitation mediated by the hydrodynamic flow focusing in microfluidic as the most promising alternative to the batch nanoprecipitation always failing in polydispersity and long and expensive postpurification processes. It then focuses on the new field of assembly of the block copolymer system and on the potential application that this kind of system could generate.