CNU's Professor Jeong Heon-ho's research team (Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering) has garnered attention for developing high-concentration nanoparticle manufacturing technology.

Professor Jeong’s team in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at CNU successfully developed a microfluidic high-speed mixing device and used it to manufacture biodegradable polymer nanoparticles loaded with high-concentration drugs.

Conventional methods of nanoparticle manufacturing suffered from uneven particle sizes due to slow mixing speeds and low drug loading efficiency of less than 10%.

Existing nanoparticle manufacturing methods have the problem that the size of the particles is not very uniform due to the slow mixing speed, and the drug delivery efficiency is low because the drug is loaded at a concentration of less than 10%.

The research team used a 3D printer to manufacture a microfluidic ultra-high-speed mixing device designed with a micrometer-sized flow channel and achieved very fast mixing of two different fluids with a three-dimensional structure within the channel, producing 43% high-concentration drug-loaded nanoparticles. 

It is expected that the success of this development of polymer nanoparticle manufacturing technology will reduce side effects in the field of drug delivery and greatly improve the effectiveness of disease treatment.

This research was conducted with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea's Individual Research Project, Outstanding Young Researcher, and was published in the international academic journal Chemical Engineering Journal (impact factor: 15.1, JCR top 3.2%).