CONTINUOUS FLOW CHEMISTRY

Continuous flow chemistry offers a variety of advantages over traditional batch processes, by providing rapid, efficient mixing, superior heat transfer, and safe operation at high temperatures and pressures. Due to these attractive characteristics, along with an inherent potential for high scalability within a smaller physical footprint, flow chemistry has generated significant interest within the pharmaceutical industry for improving synthesis efficiency. Our lab utilizes the benefits of flow chemistry for two broad applications: organic synthesis and nanoparticle assembly. In collaboration with several research groups at Purdue, we are developing a multi-scale synthesis platform capable of optimizing synthesis routes for a broad range of common active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Our system incorporates microreactors in the size range of 0.5-19.5 μL that have been coupled with on-line and off-line mass spectrometry (MS) for reaction monitoring and route optimization. We have also used these microreactors to control self-assembly reactions for the rapid and stepwise formulation of multifunctional nucleic acid-loaded therapeutic nanoparticles with excellent control over their physical properties and biological performance.