The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (President Sang-Jin Park, hereinafter referred to as KIMM) under the Ministry of Science and ICT has succeeded in developing a mass production technology for microchannel chips that can uniformly and mass-produce lipid nanoparticles such as liposomes, which are key raw materials for vaccines, protein drugs, functional foods, and cosmetics.

The research team led by Young-eun Yoo, a principal researcher at the Nano Process Equipment Laboratory of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, announced on the 16th that they have designed a microchannel chip using plastic materials that are easy to mass-produce, and developed injection molding and packaging technologies to manufacture it, thereby accelerating the commercialization of microchannel chips that had been used only for research purposes up until now.

The newly developed microchannel chip can mass-produce liposomes in more than 10,000 microchannels. Liposomes, which are lipid nanoparticles, are used as key raw materials for functional cosmetics, foods, vaccines, and protein pharmaceuticals.

In order to develop next-generation pharmaceuticals, functional foods, and cosmetics, it is necessary to protect various active substances, such as nucleic acids and anti-aging substances, which are key raw materials, from the external environment and efficiently deliver them to the necessary locations, such as inside cells, without loss.

Lipid nanoparticles are used as such carriers, and it is important to manufacture them uniformly in a microscopic size of tens to hundreds of nanometers depending on the product to which they are applied. Liposomes are one of these lipid nanoparticles that are attracting attention.

Generally, to obtain liposomes in large quantities, lipid droplets mixed in an aqueous solution are crushed using ultrasonic waves or passed through a high-pressure passage. However, efforts are ongoing to uniformly manufacture smaller-sized liposomes to discover new medicinal effects or functionality.

To solve this problem, research is being conducted using microchannels that can manufacture very small and uniform liposomes down to tens of nanometers in size, but productivity is very low, making it difficult to put them into practical use.

The research team of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials succeeded in uniformly manufacturing liposomes of several tens to several hundred nanometers in size in large quantities by forming more than 10,000 microchannels on a plastic chip based on microstructure design and molding and packaging technology and passing and mixing lipid solutions and hydrophilic solutions.

The research team transferred core technologies to Neo Nanotech Co., Ltd., a research institute, and successfully commercialized equipment for research and development.

“This achievement will contribute to the mass production of uniform lipid nanoparticles, which are key raw materials for next-generation pharmaceuticals such as vaccines, functional foods, and cosmetics, as well as the practical application of next-generation on-site diagnostic technology,” said Senior Researcher Yoo Young-eun. “We will continue to develop commercial-level microchannel chip design and manufacturing technology so that we can provide materials, components, and manufacturing solutions for the pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics, and diagnostic industries.”

Meanwhile, this project was carried out with the support of the basic project of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, ‘Development of Nano-based Hazardous Substance Detection and Diagnostic Device Platform Technology’ and the ACE project (SME) of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, ‘Development of Microchannel Devices and Equipment for Mass Production of Nanoliposomes’.