Less can be more, even with medication. Controlled drug release creates opportunities to use lower than normal doses of medicine to achieve the same therapeutic effect, while reducing the risk of unwanted side effects. Researchers at Cambridge University, under the guidance of Dr. Alexander Routh, are continuing to find new and innovative ways working with LUDOX® colloidal silica as a building block. This simple and scalable strategy for the production of porous microscale capsules could manage the release of pharmaceutical agents.1
Routh’s team sees important advantages for silica as a pharmaceutical vehicle. When compared to synthetic polymers, which tend to be soft and potentially leaky, the shells formed by assemblies of silica nanoparticles are more rigid and durable. Further, the rate at which they release their payload can be determined by the size of the pores formed between particles.
Image used with permission from the Colloidal Dispersions Research Group at The University of Cambridge, image taken by David Brossault, PhD student
https://www.ceb.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/rg-colloidal-dispersions
Colloidal silica provides many advantages to drug manufacturers. It is a commonplace ingredient and has a solid regulatory track record of safety when used in humans. In addition, colloidal silica is an inexpensive reagent that can be used straight off the shelf to obtain consistent results.
Tackle your pharmaceutical challenges with colloidal silica. Grace manufactures LUDOX® colloidal silicas in a broad range of particle sizes and surface modifications to deliver excellent performance in pharmaceutical applications.
Depending on your application and its potential in the marketplace, Grace can help you select or even customize the particle size and chemistry to make your idea work, or work better. Whether it becomes part of your product or a key to your process, LUDOX® colloidal silicas’ quality and consistency are renowned—and reliable.
Cited in over 35,000 patents, applications for LUDOX® colloidal silicas are numerous and diverse. Researchers continue to discover new ways to use LUDOX® colloidal silicas in cutting-edge research, breaking ground for future scientific innovation and leading to potentially thousands more patents to come. What can LUDOX® colloidal silicas do for you? Learn more at grace.com/ludox
1. David Franck, Frederic Brossault, and Alexander F. Routh, “Salt-Driven Assembly of Magnetic Silica Microbeads with Tunable Porosity,” Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 562 (March 7, 2020): 381–90, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2019.12.032.