I am preparing a drug for oral gavage which needs to be dissolved in 0.5% methylcellulose. The drug powder remains as clump and refuses to go into solution. Any tips on this?
0.5% MC vehicles are typically suspensions, not solutions, unless they are low concentrations. If you want to break up the clumps so that the suspension is more uniform, you can try a sonication probe or a tissue homogenizer probe.
If allowed, you may also modify the pH of the vehicle to ionize the drug and dissolve it.
Solubility is a thermodynamic property. You will only be able to at best temporarily get more drug in solution using tricks like heating. The drug will tend toward the thermodynamic solubility and fall out of solution over time if it's above the thermodynamic solubility.
Thanks Arthur Alekseyev . I tried sonication which helps in making uniform suspension but like you said it does fall out of solution over time. I also switched to saline instead of water to make the methylcellulose, so that seems to have helped as well.
I do not understand the rationale behind dissolving the drug in a methylcellulose solution. However, you should try to dissolve the drug first in the same solvent you used to dissolve methylcellulose and then mix it with the solution of 0.5% methylcellulose.
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