• Clean Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.53-61
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• 2006

A PGSS (Particles from Gas Saturated Solutions) process designed to generate nano-particles using supercritical fluids has been conducted for the fabrication of Poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles that encapsulate a protein drug. It is demonstrated that the polymer and the dry powder of a protein can be mixed under supercritical carbon dioxide conditions and that the protein component retains its biological activity. In this experiment, the mixture of polymer which is plasticized and dry powder protein was sprayed to form solid polymer that encapsulate the protein. It is found that supercritical fluid process give fine tuning of particle size and particle size distribution by simple manipulations of the process parameters. Porous particles were formed with irregular shape. Protein encapsulated in the polymer was found to have enzymatic activity without significant loss of its initial value.