A simple improved desolvation method for the rapid preparation of albumin nanoparticles

The current study tried to establish a simple and fast method for the preparation of BSA and HSA nanoparticles, based on an improved desolvation procedure under the aspect of a controllable particle size around 100 nm for drug delivery applications. The Procedure used for the nanoparticles preparation was simplified by using a designed apparatus for controlling the addition of ethanol and it was used instead of conventional tubing pump which enabled the preparation of nanoparticles under defined conditions. By using EDC as cross-linker instead of glutharaldehyde, the time of nanoparticles preparation procedure was reduced to 3 h. Several factors of the preparation process, such as the volume of the albumin solution, desolvating agent volume, the amount of cross-linker, the presence of salts and protein concentration were evaluated. Nanoparticles with smaller size were obtained under experimental conditions without the presence of salts or the use of buffers, 250 mg of protein/4 ml water, 5 mg cross-linker, the addition of 4 and 8 ml ethanol by using the designed apparatus to the HSA and BSA solution, respectively. By using this improved method, BSA and HSA nanoparticles of the size around 100 nm and polydispersity below 0.2 were obtained. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.