Polymer-filled microcontainers for oral delivery loaded using supercritical impregnation

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Pharmaceutical Technology
• Chemical Engineering

Background:

• Oral drug delivery systems are crucial for improving therapeutic bioavailability.
• Reservoir-based microdevices are gaining interest for delivering insoluble compounds and biomolecules.
• Current drug loading methods for microdevices are often inefficient and time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an effective and efficient drug loading technique for microcontainers.
• To optimize the loading of poorly soluble drugs into microdevices.
• To enhance drug bioavailability and control release kinetics for oral administration.

Main Methods:

• Combining inkjet printing for precise polymer dispensing with supercritical fluid impregnation using carbon dioxide (scCO2).
• Utilizing poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) as a polymer matrix for drug encapsulation.
• Controlling polymer amount via droplet volume and number; tuning drug loading via impregnation parameters.

Main Results:

• Achieved reproducible drug loading in microcontainers with a quasi-no-waste inkjet printing process.
• Supercritical CO2 impregnation resulted in faster dissolution rates compared to traditional solid dispersions.
• Demonstrated tunable drug release modulation through optimized impregnation parameters.

Conclusions:

• The combined inkjet printing and scCO2 impregnation offers an effective, safe, and solvent-free solution for microdevice fabrication.
• This method facilitates high-throughput production of advanced oral drug delivery systems.
• The developed technique improves drug loading efficiency and performance for poorly soluble compounds.