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Drug Delivery and Scaffolding in the Era of 3D-Printing and Microfluidic Techniques: Challenges and Opportunities 2.0

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A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2021) | Viewed by 29585

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ida Genta

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Department of Drug Sciences, University of Pavia, Viale Taramelli 12, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: drug delivery; polymer nanoparticles; microspheres; biodegradable polymers; thermosensitive hydrogel; 3D bioprinting; tissue regeneration
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Bice Conti

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Department of Drug Sciences, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: tissue engineering; nanomedicine; drug delivery; nanocarriers; electrospinning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is a continuation of our previous Special Issue “Drug Delivery and Scaffolding in the Era of 3D-Printing and Microfluidic Techniques: Challenges and Opportunities” (https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/journal/ijms/special_issues/3D_printing_tech).

In the era of precision medicine, the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches is being reached through the development of even more sophisticated pharmaceutical systems. In combination with the explosion of biomolecule discoveries and the knowledge of physiological and pathological pathways, pharmaceutical system applications have extended to the selective delivery of drugs and genetic materials (i.e. selective nanocarriers, manipulated with multifunctionality, also exploitable for theranostic purposes, and polymeric scaffolds used to tune drug or biomolecule delivery) and to cell delivery (i.e. polymeric scaffolds where the scaffold material and structure, cells and bioactive molecules interact for tissue engineering or regenerative medicine). To date, there has been a discrepancy between the amount of research devoted to the topic and its translation to patients, due to the fact that pharmaceutical systems are often quite sophisticated in their design, difficult both to reliably and reproducibly manufacture and to characterize from a pharmaceutical and toxicological viewpoint.

Confident in the utility of new technological approaches in helping the clinical translation of innovative drug delivery systems, this Special Issue is aimed at highlighting the impact and challenges of the most recent technology in the development of more cost-effective, as well as patient-friendly, drug delivery systems.

Suggested topic are: 3D-printing; 3D-bio-printing; electrospinning; injection molding and combinations thereof for scaffold development or for formulative development; microfluidics techniques for nanocarrier preparation; continuous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals; regulatory approaches to innovative technologies.

Prof. Dr. Ida Genta
Prof. Dr. Bice Conti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

3D printing
3D bio-printing
electrospinning
microfluidics
injection molding
continuous manufacturing
regulatory approaches to innovative technologies in pharmaceutical field

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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25 pages, 5795 KiB

Open AccessArticle

3D Printing to Increase the Flexibility of the Chemical Synthesis of Biologically Active Molecules: Design of On-Demand Gas Generation Reactors

by Kirill S. Erokhin, Evgeniy G. Gordeev, Dmitriy E. Samoylenko, Konstantin S. Rodygin and Valentine P. Ananikov

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22(18), 9919; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijms22189919 - 14 Sep 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3643

Abstract

The development of new drugs is accelerated by rapid access to functionalized and D-labeled molecules with improved activity and pharmacokinetic profiles. Diverse synthetic procedures often involve the usage of gaseous reagents, which can be a difficult task due to the requirement of a dedicated laboratory setup. Here, we developed a special reactor for the on-demand production of gases actively utilized in organic synthesis (C₂H₂, H₂, C₂D₂, D₂, and CO₂) that completely eliminates the need for high-pressure equipment and allows for integrating gas generation into advanced laboratory practice. The reactor was developed by computer-aided design and manufactured using a conventional 3D printer with polypropylene and nylon filled with carbon fibers as materials. The implementation of the reactor was demonstrated in representative reactions with acetylene, such as atom-economic nucleophilic addition (conversions of 19–99%) and nickel-catalyzed S-functionalization (yields 74–99%). One of the most important advantages of the reactor is the ability to generate deuterated acetylene (C₂D₂) and deuterium gas (D₂), which was used for highly significant, atom-economic and cost-efficient deuterium labeling of S,O-vinyl derivatives (yield 68–94%). Successful examples of their use in organic synthesis are provided to synthesize building blocks of heteroatom-functionalized and D-labeled biologically active organic molecules. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drug Delivery and Scaffolding in the Era of 3D-Printing and Microfluidic Techniques: Challenges and Opportunities 2.0)

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18 pages, 3472 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Manufacturing of 3D-Printed Microfluidic Devices for the Synthesis of Drug-Loaded Liposomal Formulations

by Giulia Ballacchino, Edward Weaver, Essyrose Mathew, Rossella Dorati, Ida Genta, Bice Conti and Dimitrios A. Lamprou

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22(15), 8064; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijms22158064 - 28 Jul 2021

Cited by 30 | Viewed by 5233

Abstract

Microfluidic technique has emerged as a promising tool for the production of stable and monodispersed nanoparticles (NPs). In particular, this work focuses on liposome production by microfluidics and on factors involved in determining liposome characteristics. Traditional fabrication techniques for microfluidic devices suffer from several disadvantages, such as multistep processing and expensive facilities. Three-dimensional printing (3DP) has been revolutionary for microfluidic device production, boasting facile and low-cost fabrication. In this study, microfluidic devices with innovative micromixing patterns were developed using fused deposition modelling (FDM) and liquid crystal display (LCD) printers. To date, this work is the first to study liposome production using LCD-printed microfluidic devices. The current study deals with 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) liposomes with cholesterol (2:1) prepared using commercial and 3D-printed microfluidic devices. We evaluated the effect of microfluidic parameters, chip manufacturing, material, and channel design on liposomal formulation by analysing the size, PDI, and ζ-potential. Curcumin exhibits potent anticancer activity and it has been reported that curcumin-loaded liposomes formulated by microfluidics show enhanced encapsulation efficiency when compared with other reported systems. In this work, curcumal liposomes were produced using the developed microfluidic devices and particle sizing, ζ-potential, encapsulation efficiency, and in vitro release studies were performed at 37 °C. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drug Delivery and Scaffolding in the Era of 3D-Printing and Microfluidic Techniques: Challenges and Opportunities 2.0)

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Review

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26 pages, 2315 KiB

Open AccessReview

Fabrication and Applications of Microfluidic Devices: A Review

by Adelina-Gabriela Niculescu, Cristina Chircov, Alexandra Cătălina Bîrcă and Alexandru Mihai Grumezescu

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22(4), 2011; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijms22042011 - 18 Feb 2021

Cited by 236 | Viewed by 19819

Abstract

Microfluidics is a relatively newly emerged field based on the combined principles of physics, chemistry, biology, fluid dynamics, microelectronics, and material science. Various materials can be processed into miniaturized chips containing channels and chambers in the microscale range. A diverse repertoire of methods can be chosen to manufacture such platforms of desired size, shape, and geometry. Whether they are used alone or in combination with other devices, microfluidic chips can be employed in nanoparticle preparation, drug encapsulation, delivery, and targeting, cell analysis, diagnosis, and cell culture. This paper presents microfluidic technology in terms of the available platform materials and fabrication techniques, also focusing on the biomedical applications of these remarkable devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drug Delivery and Scaffolding in the Era of 3D-Printing and Microfluidic Techniques: Challenges and Opportunities 2.0)

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