Significant solubility of carbon dioxide in Soluplus® facilitates impregnation of ibuprofen using supercritical fluid technology

• Published in: Pharmaceutical development and technology Vol. 23; no. 7; pp. 697 - 705
• Main Authors: Obaidat, Rana, Alnaief, Mohammed, Jaeger, Philip
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Taylor & Francis 09.08.2018
• Subjects: amorphous; dispersions; ibuprofen; Soluplus; supercritical fluid; ibuprofen; Soluplus; amorphous; dispersions; supercritical fluid
• ISSN: 1083-7450; 1097-9867
• DOI: 10.1080/10837450.2017.1315135

Treatment of Soluplus ® with supercritical carbon dioxide allows promising applications in preparing dispersions of amorphous solids. Several characterization techniques were employed to reveal this effect, including CO 2 gas sorption under high pressure and physicochemical characterizations techniques. A gravimetric method was used to determine the solubility of carbon dioxide in the polymer at elevated pressure. The following physicochemical characterizations were used: thermal analysis, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform, infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Drug loading of the polymer with ibuprofen as a model drug was also investigated. The proposed treatment with supercritical carbon dioxide allows to prepare solid solutions of Soluplus ® in less than two hours at temperatures that do not exceed 45 °C, which is a great advantage to be used for thermolabile drugs. The advantages of using this technology for Soluplus ® formulations lies behind the high sorption capability of carbon dioxide inside the polymer. This will ensure rapid diffusion of the dissolved/dispersed drug inside the polymer under process conditions and rapid precipitation of the drug in the amorphous form during depressurization accompanied by foaming of the polymer.