Preparation of ibuprofen/lipid composite microparticles by supercritical fluid technique

Abstract

Using the CO₂- and N₂-assisted atomization processes, the production of ibuprofen/lipid composite microparticles is investigated, in which the lipid includes myristic acid and tripalmitin. The produced composite particles show similar morphology to that of the pure lipids obtained by the same process. In the case of the N₂-assisted process, the average size of composite particles is slightly larger than that of the pure lipid particles due to the difficulty of solidification when using N₂. In the case of the CO₂-assisted process, the average size of composite particles is slightly smaller than that of the pure myristic acid particles, but slightly larger than that of the pure tripalmitin particles. The dissolution study reveals that the drug release from the ibuprofen/myristic acid particles is enhanced in comparison with that of the unprocessed ibuprofen. For the particles produced by the N₂-assisted process, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns clearly indicate the encapsulation of ibuprofen into myristic acid. The obtained ibuprofen/tripalmitin composite particles with 5% or 20% of ibuprofen (in mass) evidently show the controlled drug release: only about 20% of the drug is released in 500 min from the ibuprofen/tripalmitin composite particles consisting of 20% ibuprofen prepared by the CO₂-assisted process, and the same release is obtained from the ibuprofen/tripalmitin composite particles containing 5% ibuprofen prepared by the N₂-assisted process.

Keywords

supercritical fluids / composite microparticles / ibuprofen / myristic acid / tripalmitin