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.
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