Failed experiment could open doors in pharma industry
8 Aug 2012
What one student thought was a failed experiment has led to a serendipitous discovery hailed by some scientists as a potential game changer for the mass production of nanoparticles.
Soroush Shabahang, a graduate student in CREOL (The College of Optics & Photonics) at the University of Central Florida, made the finding that could ultimately change the way pharmaceuticals are produced and delivered.
The discovery was based on using heat to break up long, thin fibers into tiny, proportionally sized seeds, which have the capability to hold multiple types of materials locked in place.
The most immediate prospect is the creation of particles capable of drug delivery that could, for example, combine different agents for fighting a tumor.
Or it could combine a time-release component with medications that will only activate once they reach their target - infected cells.
“With this approach you can make a very sophisticated structure with no more effort than creating the simplest of structures,” said Ayman Abouraddy, an assistant professor at CREOL.
The technique relies on heat to break molten fibers into spherical droplets. Glass fibers are perhaps best known as the cylindrical cables that transmit digital information over long distances.
For years, scientists have been looking for ways to improve the purity of glass fibers to allow for faster, disruption-free transmission of light waves.
Shabahang and fellow graduate student Joshua Kaufman were working on just such a project, heating and stretching glass fiber on a homemade tapering machine.
Shabahang noticed that instead of the desired result of making the center of the cable thinner, the material actually broke apart into multiple miniature spheres.
“It was kind of a failure to me,” Shabahang said.
However, when Abouraddy heard what had happened he knew right away that this “mistake” was a major breakthrough.
Shabahang’s experiment shows that by heating and then cooling multimaterial fibers yniform particles that look like droplets are produced.
Moreover, Shabahang demonstrated that once the spheres form, additional materials can be added and locked into place like LEGO building blocks, resulting in particles with sophisticated internal structures.
Especially significant is the creation of “beach ball” particles consisting of two different materials melded together in alternating fashion, similar to the stripes on a beach ball.
