SBIR-STTR Award

Engineering Platform for the Nanoformulations of Water Insoluble Drugs Using Supercritical Antisolvent Process with Enhanced Mass Transfer
Award last edited on: 1/11/2006

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
NSF
Total Award Amount
$99,901
Award Phase
1
Solicitation Topic Code
-----

Principal Investigator
Poongunran Muthukumaran

Company Information

Thar Technologies Inc (AKA: Thar Designs Inc)

730 William Pitt Way
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
   (412) 826-3939
   murray@thardesigns.com
   www.thartech.com
Location: Multiple
Congr. District: 17
County: Allegheny

Phase I

Contract Number: ----------
Start Date: ----    Completed: ----
Phase I year
2002
Phase I Amount
$99,901
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop a flexible platform for nano-formulations of water insoluble drugs. As the practice of medicine progresses towards "complete cure for diseases", delivering new drugs to specific areas to target specific tissues becomes an important objective of overall pharmaceutical research. Unfortunately many new drugs have poor water solubility that reduces their bioavailability. Carefully formulated nanoparticles and nanospheres are reported to have therapeutic advantages such as bioavailability, ability to avoid reticuloendothelial system (RES) removal, and direct tumor targeting. This project will develop the Supercritical Anti-Solvent with Enhanced Mass Transfer (SAS-EM) Process for producing nanoparticles of water insoluble drugs and encapsulating them in biodegradable polymers as nanospheres. The three key steps in the Phase I study include : (1) Phase behavior studies to identify the suitable solvent and experimental conditions, (2) Particle formation studies where nanoparticles of said drugs are produced using supercritical antisolvent process with enhanced mass transfer, and (3) Characterization of the nanoparticles/nanospheres for particle size, size distribution, and crystallinity. Light scattering techniques will be used to measure the size distribution complemented with Scanning electron microscopic visualization. X-ray diffraction measurements will be used to describe the crystallinity. The commercial applications of this project are in the area of pharmaceutical drug delivery

Phase II

Contract Number: ----------
Start Date: ----    Completed: ----
Phase II year
----
Phase II Amount
----