Sonomechanics Blog

The recording of our recent webinar, entitled "Commercial Production of Water-Soluble THC & CBD by High-Intensity Ultrasound", featuring Dr. Alexey Peshkovsky as a speaker, is now ready. The webinar, which was held on Wednesday, May 13th, 2020, had over 400 registered participants and generated close to 200 questions. Some of these questions were addressed by Alexey during the webinar, the answers to the rest are provided in this post. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below. 

Recent years have seen major breakthroughs in how vaccines and antiviral drugs are formulated and manufactured. Nanoemulsions and liposomes are now widely used as vaccine and drug carriers because they can easily incorporate lipophilic (in the case of nanoemulsions) and hydrophilic (in the case of liposomes) bioactive compounds, stabilize substances that otherwise undergo hydrolysis, and significantly reduce side effects of potent drugs. For the past 14 years, Industrial Sonomechanics (ISM) has been conducting R&D and supplying its scalable ultrasonic technology to many companies in this field, including those using it in ultrasonic vaccine production and, more recently, in the development of SARS-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus) vaccines and/or treatments of the associated COVID-19 disease. This article describes some of the challenges faced by commercial-scale manufacturers of vaccines and antiviral medications and explains how our technology contributes to overcoming them.  

For the past two years, many businesses have been using our all-in-one NanoStabilizer®-LT to convert their cannabis extracts and other hydrophobic bio-actives into water-compatible, stable, translucent nanoemulsions. Most commonly, the conversion is done in order to enhance the bioavailability and accelerate the onset of action of cannabinoids and to infuse beverages without making them cloudy. Designed to work with Industrial Sonomechanics ultrasonic liquid processors, NanoStabilizer®-LT requires no formulation development experience and is compatible with a wide range of bio-actives, including most types of cannabis extracts and isolates, pharmaceutical ingredients, vitamins, essential oils, terpenes, etc. In this post, I provide answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about this popular product.

We are happy to announce that the recording of Dr. Alexey Peshkovsky's 2019 Cannabis Drinks Expo keynote presentation is now ready. In his talk, entitled "Water-compatible cannabis extract nanoemulsions: benefits, formulation development and production methodology", ISM President & Chief Scientific Officer covered several topics critical to the cannabis-infused beverage industry.

One of the primary concerns when formulating oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsions is the stability of the finished product. Destabilization of an O/W nanoemulsion can occur due to several physical, chemical or biological processes that deteriorate its quality over time. Understanding and avoiding these processes is paramount to ensuring that products based on cannabis extract nanoemulsions (a.k.a. "water-soluble" CBD and THC) have a long and predictable shelf-life. In this post, common nanoemulsion destabilization pathways will be described, along with the most effective strategies to avoid them.