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Ultrafast laser processing of drug particles in water for pharmaceutical discovery

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Abstract

The laser fragmentation technique has been extensively used to produce inorganic nanoparticles, but its practice on organic materials, especially on drugs, is less common. Here, we briefly review the recent advances in laser micro-/nanonization of organic materials and the rationale of using laser fragmentation for drug discovery. We present our case studies of two drug models: fenofibrate and naproxen. Both drugs were fragmented in water with femtosecond (fs) laser and characterized in terms of particle size distribution and physicochemical properties. Effects of fs laser fragmentation were also compared with nanosecond (ns) laser fragmentation and with conventional media milling technique. Fs laser was more suitable to produce sub-micron size drug particles than ns laser, but degradation of drugs after nanonization was also more pronounced than micronization. Physicochemical transformations such as oxidation, hydration and amorphisation might occur during the laser–material interactions. Laser nanonization showed improved dissolution kinetics, similar to media milling. Unlike the conventional milling techniques, laser fragmentation enabled the treatment of minute amount (as small as several milligrams) of drugs with high efficiency, thus is a useful tool for particle size reduction during the early phases of drug discovery.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge J.-C. Leroux and J. Leblond for helpful discussions and access to experimental equipment, E. Nadezhina for the elemental analyses and Y. Drolet and J.-M. Rabanel for technical assistance. Financial support was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Groupe de Recherche Universitaire sur le Médicament (GRUM), the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Quebec (FRSQ) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laser Processing and Plasmonics Laboratories, Department of Engineering Physics, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Downtown Station, P.O. Box 6079, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3A7, Canada

    Weimeng Ding, Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, Emmanuelle Bouvier & Michel Meunier

  2. Faculty of Pharmacy, Université de Montréal, Downtown Station, P.O. Box 6128, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Grégoire Leclair

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  1. Weimeng Ding
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  2. Jean-Philippe Sylvestre
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  3. Emmanuelle Bouvier
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  4. Grégoire Leclair
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  5. Michel Meunier
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Correspondence to Michel Meunier.

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Ding, W., Sylvestre, JP., Bouvier, E. et al. Ultrafast laser processing of drug particles in water for pharmaceutical discovery. Appl. Phys. A 114, 267–276 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-013-8089-1

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