Core-Shell Hydrogel Particles
Core-Shell Hydrogel Particles
Lucas Attia, Liang-Hsun Chen, Professor Patrick S. Doyle
MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
The image shows spherical core-shell hydrogel particles with different gel materials comprising the core and the shell. We use these hydrogels to make better tablets which can enable the oral delivery of drugs that normally require complicated processing in order to be formulated effectively. We encapsulate tiny nanodroplets containing drugs inside these gels, then dry these droplets to make drug nanocrystals inside the gels. Using different gel materials, we can control the way that the drug nanocrystals dissolve inside the body. We can also encapsulate nanodroplets containing different drugs to incorporate multiple drugs that normally would be difficult to combine in the same tablet.