Continuous manufacturing of carboxyamidotriazole- encapsulated nanoemulsions using adaptive focused acoustics: Potential green technology for the pharmaceutical industry

Nanoemulsions containing hydrophobic drugs have a great potential in the pharmaceutical industries to improve the bioavailability of the drug. However, currently there is no cost-effective way of producing nanoemulsions in large scale. The need of subjecting emulsions to an extreme pressure of 50 MPa demands a large excess of energy for the manufacturing process, while low-energy method requires large amount of solvents. Here, nanoemulsions containing a well-characterized hydrophobic drug, carboxyamidotriazole (CAI), are produced in both batch and continuous modes to demonstrate the scalability of nanoemulsion production using Covaris’ Adaptive Focused AcousticsTM (AFA) technology. To move from batch scale to continuous flow, the acoustic and thermal energy inputs can be manipulated to adjust particle size, while the composition and temperature of starting materials can be altered to achieve complete dissolution of hydrophobic drugs, thus providing 100% encapsulation efficiency. Furthermore, using two AFA systems in series can drastically enhance the production flow rates, making AFA a competitive means for producing nanoemulsions in the pharmaceutical industry.