The original research deal, signed in late 2004, provided for the development and trial of bespoke prototype Q Chip MicroPlants; but following testing of the equipment, Biocompatibles has requested further development and installation of a unit at its facilities in Farnham, UK.
The MicroPlant platform uses Q Chip's microfluidic technology and enables the production of commercial volumes of uniform, loaded microcapsules using a wide range of biocompatible polymers.
The original deal, signed in December last year, saw Q Chip receive a combination of fees and milestone payments. In addition Biocompatibles received exclusive rights to Q Chips' intellectual property portfolio for certain applications for the duration of the research project.
Q Chip's business development director, Dr Jo Daniels, said: "Current methods of manufacturing polymer microcapsules produce a wide size distribution, resulting in post-processing to select a particular size rang. This can be expensive and also wasteful if the product sales mix doesn't match the process output."
"As an example, a typical size distribution using an emulsion polymerisation process can cover 1-1000 microns. Furthermore, the harsh processing environments required for some of these techniques can have a detrimental effect on particle integrity, and as a result, are incompatible with applications involving delicate substrates, such as live cells," he added.
In response to these limitations Q Chip has developed a MicroPlant for the production of highly uniform polymer microcapsules using proprietary microfluidic technology. Incorporating microfluidics allows the sophisticated control of chemical reactions, not achievable in conventional bulk reaction vessels.
Selecting a desired particle size from sub 100 to 2000 microns, many microfluidic circuits work in parallel to produce monodisperse polymer microcapsules with less than 5 per cent variation in size. This efficient process eliminates the waste associated with much wider size distributions from other manufacturing methods.
