I'm doing salbutamol-loaded calcium alginate microparticles. Can you suggest reasons why I got low % drug encapsulation efficiency?
high concentration of polymer used,rotation speed,solubility of drug in internal media affects encapsulation efficiency
What medium you have used for solubilizing the salbutamol......will you please elaborate the procedure you adapted for preparing this microparticles. If you have used water(in which salbutamol is sparingly soluble) , then the encapsulation will also be poorer. try to solubilize more drug using some suitable surfactants or cosolvents.
hi Hinal Desai,
im using 1%, 1.5%, and 2% alginate solutions. tha alginate i used is high viscous. the drug is salbutamol/
Hi Venkatachalam Natarajan,
I used water to dissolved the polymer (sodium alginate). while i used pH 7.4 phosphate buffer solns in the drug release experiments as well as in the chemical assays for the drug content determination. i used manual syringe extrusion method to form the microparticles. thanks
Syringe extrusion methods should be a good method for soluble drugs. Since the drug is sparingly soluble, it has formed precipitate which could not comeout easily from the syringe resulting in poor entrapment of drug in the particles.
There are three options although you might have others depending on experimental conditons:
1. Increase the bore size of syringe needle such as #18 gauge.
2. Decrease the particle size of the drug.
3. Increase the solubility of the drug by preparing a solid dispersion using beta-cyclodextrin.
In the above cases you need not change the buffer.
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