Dispersion-Based Methods for the Engineering and Manufacture of Polymeric Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery Applications

Polymeric nanoparticle is a general platform for drug delivery that has been receiving extensive attention in both academia and industry. With the ability to load drugs at high encapsulation efficiency, to release drugs at a sustained and controllable manner, and to be functionalized with targeting agents for cell-specific drug delivery, polymeric nanoparticle-based drug formulations show great potential for improving disease therapeutics. One great advantage of polymeric nanoparticles is that many of the methods used for their fabrication are simple and safe. However, in order to bring promising polymeric nanoparticle platforms from the lab to the clinic, these fabrication technologies need to be scaled up several orders of magnitude in terms of production yield. This review details the most popular methods for synthesizing polymeric nanoparticles in recent literature. Current lab-scale techniques are examined before going in to an evaluation of the promising technologies for large, clinical-scale nanoparticle production. This review article concludes with an outlook on the future of polymeric nanoparticle fabrication as it relates to clinical translation.