Unlocking the capability of optical microcavity analysis to measure nanoparticle refractive index

在过去的三十年里，纳米粒子被广泛采用并实现了工业化，在许多技术领域都有应用，包括医疗保健、能源生产、制造业和农业。在制药领域，这一进展的核心是能够用高毒性抗癌药物或遗传物质填充原本惰性的颗粒材料和/或使表面功能化，以掩盖它们在人体免疫反应中的存在，并更好地靶向释放特定器官、肿瘤或细胞成分的“有效载荷”。这些发展导致了先进治疗领域的一系列科学突破，通过使用纳米载体将药物输送到体内需要的地方，并降低治疗指数，即对健康器官和组织的毒性。然而，制造这种“先进疗法”具有挑战性，因为它需要精细的工具来仔细检查比人类头发宽度小1000倍的纳米颗粒。牛津大学HighQ开发了一种新技术，可以通过纳米粒子的光学特性，即更具体地说，它们的折射率，来表征纳米粒子的组成。人们可以用这个参数来测量纳米颗粒载体内/上的治疗分子的颗粒量。该技术占地面积有限，易于使用，并且有可能在制造过程中进行在线构建，因此对制药行业特别有吸引力。该项目将利用英国国家物理实验室的专业知识来设计和制造高度工程化的材料，这些材料可以用来充分表征这项新技术的能力，并提供设备来严格验证这种新的测量方法与正交分析方法。后者往往是笨重、耗时和昂贵的方法，这突出了需要一个更灵活的技术平台来快速筛选材料和保证质量。联合团队将集中精力开发一系列演示，以释放Oxford HighQ技术的真正潜力。例如，该项目将输出一份与先进疗法直接相关的申请说明，这将有助于在制药部门推广新技术。

The last three decades have seen the widespread adoption and industrialisation of nanoparticles serving applications in many technology sectors, including healthcare, energy production, manufacturing industry and agriculture. In the pharmaceutical sector, at the heart of this progress is the ability to fill otherwise inert particle materials with highly toxic anti-cancer drugs or genetic materials and/or functionalise the surface to both mask their presence from the human immune response and to better target the release of the "payload" at a particular organ, tumour or cellular component. These developments have led to a series of scientific breakthroughs in the field of advanced therapeutics by using nanocarriers to deliver drugs where it is needed in the body and reducing therapeutic index, i.e. toxicity to healthy organ and tissues.However, manufacturing of such "advanced therapies" is challenging as it requires fine tools to scrutinise nanoparticles 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Oxford HighQ has developed a new technique providing the ability to characterise the composition of nanoparticles through their optical properties, i.e. more specifically their refractive indices. One could use this parameter to measure on a particle-by-particle basis the amount of therapeutic molecules loaded within/on a nanoparticle carrier. The limited footprint, ease-of-use and potential for this technique to be built in-line within a manufacturing process makes it particularly attractive to the pharmaceutical industry. This project will employ the expertise of the UK's National Physical Laboratory to design and manufacture highly engineered materials that can be used to fully characterise the capabilities of this new technology, and provide facilities to rigorously validate this new measurement against orthogonal analytical methods. The latter tends to be bulky, time consuming and expensive methods, which highlight the need for a more agile technological platform for rapid screening of materials and quality assurance purposes. The joint team will focus its efforts in developing a series of demonstrations to unlock the true potential of Oxford HighQ's technology. For example, the project will output an application note directly relevant to advanced therapeutics that will help promoting out new technology in the pharmaceutical sector.