Cell & Enzyme Screening

Functional FACS

Cancer & Residual Disease Diagnosis

Antibody Engineering

Drug Formulation

Industrial Enzyme Development

Therapeutic Enzyme Development

On-chip Synthesis & Screening

RNAi Screening

Ethanol Development

Drug Formulation
PLS

RainDance Technologies (RDT) has combined droplet technology with microfluidics to enable a large number of analytical reactions (>105/min) to take place using extremely low volumes of drugs or reagents in microscopic NanoReactors™. The Professional Laboratory System™ (PLS) is an automated, compact fluid handling platform that enables powerful new protocols for optimizing the process of pharmaceutical formulation. RDT works with strategic partners to accelerate development of this application based on the specific interests of its collaborators.

PLS Benefits

In solubility profiling and other formulation studies, RDT’s technology will expedite development of commercially viable drugs by rapidly evaluating all possible combinations of lead compounds and buffering solutions. On-chip protocols can be designed to quickly and economically map multiple variables (pH, conductivity, salt concentration) against multiple stress conditions (temperature, light, freeze/thaw) which can all be varied at very small increments. Such comprehensive screening of all possible formulations in a wide array of different conditions requires millions of individual reactions to be quickly screened and is only feasible using the NanoReactor™ technology developed by RDT.

  • Prevents potentially promising formulations from being missed.
  • Increase confidence of relating assay results to properties of pharmaceutical potency & stability
  • Decrease time and money spent on suboptimal formulations.
  • Picoliter size droplets significantly reduce reagent usage
PLS Features
Chips for drug formulation are configured using fluid management modules that control the continuous flow of thousands of individual NanoReactors™ per second. The programmable modules precisely meter and vary the flow of lead compounds, buffers, and base and then mix and incubate the new formulation in each micordoplet.
  • Sample Loading -- The loading module continuously varies the concentrations of the reagents so all possible combinations of the formulation are rapidly created and tested.
  • Temperature Control -- Since temperature is precisely controlled on-chip and can be locally varied, the incubate module not only serves as a reaction timer, but also precisely cools or heats the NanoReactors™ in order to adequately test crystallization or dissolution.
  • Optical Readouts -- A variety of optical detection methods including fluorescence detection, fluorescence polarization, and light scattering can be used to screen the NanoReactors™ and their formulations of biological or small organic molecule drugs.
  • Real Time Statistics -- All microdroplets are volumetrically identical, stable, and can be tagged using a proprietary liquid labeling technique, allowing for quantitative experiments and online statistical analysis.

Drug Formulation Schematic

Chip architecture for drug formulation