Development of dexamethasone loaded nanomicelles using a 3D printed microfluidic device for ocular drug delivery applications

Evidently, nanomicelles serve as an outstanding pharmaceutical carrier due to their small size, capability to reduce the associated side effects and drug degradation, and improved corneal penetration for ocular drug delivery applications. The efficiency and structure of nanomicelles are greatly dependent on the process used for their preparation to enhance their efficiency. The existing approaches require a bulky thermal management instrument, pressure reactors, well-equipped utensils, and more volume of reagents with higher reaction time, making them expensive. Keeping such challenges in mind, this work aims to develop a portable and automated thermal management platform integrated with a microfluidic device for Dexamethasone (dex)-loaded nanomicelles preparation. The device features an easy-to-use, low-powered, and cost-effective smartphone-based data logging capability which was used to produce nanomicelles in a controlled and selective manner. First, a mold was developed by leveraging the stereolithography (SLA) based 3D printed method, which fabricated the microfluidic device using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) soft-lithography technique. The microchannel dimensions were 32 mm (L) × 1 mm (W) × 36 mm (ϕ). Nanomicelles were prepared with the optimized temperature at 45 °C in 6 h on a proposed portable device. However, in a conventional method, it takes less time, but involves the use of bulky and expensive instruments based on vacuum control. The obtained nanomicelles were subjected to different characterization techniques such as Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and Hen's egg test – Chorioallantoic Membrane (HET-CAM) Assay. The obtained mean average size of nanospherical structured nanomicelle was around 8–49 nm for various formulations. The developed dex-loaded micelles were evaluated for transcorneal penetration using exvivo cornea model. Eventually, the results revealed that the proposed device can perform a wide range of regulated thermal reactions on a miniature platform using an integrated and miniaturized method for various applications.