Developing a disruptive and revolutionary tool for real time inline nanoparticle size measurement, for superior quality control and process efficiency.
Nanotechnology is rapidly growing in the pharmaceutical, chemical, food & beverage industries. The global market for Nano-based goods will reach €65 Billion by 2020. A regulator of growth is quality control of Nano particle (NP) size (PS) and size distribution (PSD). The size of NPs is a determinant of their properties e.g. a change in the NP size affects the efficacy and safety of drugs. Thus, the market for NP size measurement tools is rapidly growing and in 2017 was worth €274M. To date, there is no instrument able to measure NP PS and PSD inflow. Size measurement is done offline using Dynamic Light scattering (DLS) - requiring product sampling which is often impractical as it compromises the integrity of samples. DLS systems cannot measure NP size in turbid flowing suspensions and therefore, gives measurements after batches have been produced. Defective batches are discarded costing manufacturers €0.2-2M per event with ≥50% of all batches rejected. Poor quality control exposes consumers to increased risk. There is a need for NP size measurement tools able to measure NP suspensions inflow. InProcess-LSP was founded by highly skilled former employees of MSD/Merck in Netherlands. InProcess-LSP has developed the Nanoflowsizer (NFS) a novel instrument capable of real time, inline measurement of NP PS and PSD using Low Coherence Interferometry. The NFS will provide a remote measuring tool for continuous quality control. It will achieve a 0% batch rejection rate increasing quality processing speed by 99% eliminating the drawbacks of sampling. Manufacturers will have greater control and valuable insight for process optimisation. The advanced stage of development the prototype has attracted big pharmaceutical companies including Teva and Pfizer who are our industrial partners. Target users also include NP-based manufacturers in the food and beverage and in academia. The NFS project will achieve a revenue of €4.5M by 2020 and 20 new employees.