Engineering Drug Delivery Vehicles With Multiphase Microfluidics

In our work, we propose the use of multiphase microfluidics to prepare drug delivery vehicles with complex structures, such as core-shell capsules, multicompartment microspheres and nonspherical particles; by tailoring the spatial distribution of drugs, unconventional drug release profiles can be achieved. To avoid the use of harmful organic solvents, we introduce the use of aqueous two-phase systems in microfluidics to generate the emulsion templates for making these novel delivery vehicles. By manipulating the interfacial characteristics of the emulsion templates, complex structures with hydrophilic and hydrophobic compartments can be prepared for separate encapsulation and sequential release of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs. We will discuss the fundamental problems that need to be addressed to generate these drug delivery vehicles and highlight their potential by demonstrating their release characteristics.