Abstract

Flow Chemistry Based Continuous Production of Nanocrystals for Enhancing the Solubility of Drugs

Prem Siril, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology

Poor aqueous solubility of pharmaceutical drugs is a major challenge for the pharmaceutical industry, especially with the new candidate drugs getting more lipophilic. 1 Poor solubility of drugs leads to their poor oral bioavailability, fed-fasted variability and poor patient compliance. Particle size reduction, crystal modification and the use of various nanodrug delivery systems are the popular formulation strategies to improve the solubility and bioavailability.2 While particle size reduction is an effective strategy, unfortunately there are very limited methods to achieve this. Controlled precipitation of the drug from a solvent using an antisolvent (mostly water) can be used to make sub-micron to nano-sized particles.3,4 However, most of the available methods are essentially batch processes. Flow chemistry based drop to drop reprecipitation method could be used to make drug nanoparticles continuously. Nanoparticles of Hesperetin, Megestrol acetate, Nabumetone and Silibinin were prepared using the method and the solubility of these drugs was enhanced many fold on size reduction.