Jet-Based Nanoparticle Formulation At Research Scale: The DIANT® LARU Discovery System For Ultra-Low Volume, High-Precision Continuous Manufacturing

Nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems — including lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), liposomes, micelles, and emulsions — have become critical to mRNA therapeutics, gene editing, and RNAi-based medicines. Despite this progress, formulation development remains constrained by tools that fail to reproduce manufacturing-scale mixing conditions at research volumes. Traditional batch processing suffers from poor reproducibility and material waste, while microfluidic devices often operate in laminar regimes with non-representative hydrodynamics, making scale-up unpredictable and costly.

The DIANT® LARU Discovery system resolves this bottleneck by enabling nanoparticle formulation under true turbulent jet mixing conditions at input volumes as low as 2 mL. Built on DIANT’s patented single-jet injection technology, the platform replicates the hydrodynamic environment — including Reynolds number, turbulent energy dissipation rate, and micro-mixing time — of DIANT’s larger LiFT™ and GMP manufacturing systems. This engineering fidelity provides linear scalability from milliliter-scale discovery to full-scale commercial production.

Jet mixing dynamics and scalability

At the heart of the LARU Discovery is a precisely engineered nozzle that accelerates the solvent stream into the antisolvent phase at high velocity. The resulting turbulent jet produces an intense, spatially controlled mixing zone where rapid solvent exchange induces uniform supersaturation and nucleation. Particle formation occurs in a highly homogeneous environment, minimizing gradients in concentration, shear, and temperature that can otherwise drive variability.

Because the system preserves key dimensionless mixing parameters across scales — including jet Reynolds number and Damköhler number — the physicochemical conditions that govern nanoparticle formation remain constant from R&D to GMP production. This geometric and dynamic similarity is the foundation for its predictable, linear scalability. Formulations optimized on the LARU Discovery can be transferred directly to larger DIANT systems without re-optimization, eliminating the costly iteration cycles that plague scale-up from microfluidic or batch methods.

High-speed, low-volume precision

The LARU Discovery supports flow rates from 1–20 mL/min, enabling formulation in minutes rather than hours. Minimum collection volumes of ~2–3 mL allow rapid screening of lipid compositions, payload ratios, or process parameters without excessive material use. A dead volume of <250 µL ensures nearly all input material is recovered, maximizing efficiency in early-stage research where reagents and payloads are often expensive or in limited supply.

Despite its compact size, the LARU Discovery consistently produces nanoparticles across a broad range (~25 nm to >500 nm) with tight control of polydispersity. The ability to perform dozens of precise formulations in a single day transforms the throughput of design-of-experiment (DoE) workflows and accelerates candidate selection.

Translational impact

By unifying ultra-low-volume processing, turbulent jet mixing, and engineering similarity to production-scale systems, the DIANT® LARU Discovery eliminates the most common causes of failure in nanoparticle process scale-up. It enables researchers to develop formulations under conditions that mirror commercial manufacturing from the very first experiment, reducing development timelines and de-risking investment in scale-up.

In an era where precision nanomedicine development depends on both speed and reproducibility, the LARU Discovery provides a technically rigorous bridge between the exploratory flexibility of the lab and the operational realities of GMP manufacturing — all while conserving precious materials and maintaining data integrity across the R&D-to-commercial continuum.