Recent advances in drug delivery include the study of solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) to hold a combination of hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs, for example for multi-drug therapy for tuberculosis. However, these SLN had low encapsulation efficiency and uneven release for the hydrophilic drugs, because of uneven distribution of the drugs in the body of the nanoparticle. This project will explore a new method, aerosol synthesis, for single-step, continuous production of SLN with hydrophilic cores, for simultaneous encapsulation of hydrophilic and lipophillic drugs. Water in oil (w/o) emulsions and water in oil in water (w/o/w) emulsions will be used as precursors. The effect of process parameters like solvent used, size of the microphase in the emulsion and gas temperature on particle size and morphology will be investigated. Studies of particle characteristics will be made including crystallinity (XRD), internal morphology (confocal microscopy) and encapsulation efficiency and stability (spectrofluorometry). This is related to an ongoing DST project on which other students in the group are also working at doctoral and masters levels.

Research details at - http://www.che.iitb.ac.in/faculty/chandra.html