Formulation Development and Evaluation of Nanoparticulate Drug Delivery System for Anticancer Drug

Abstract

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Owing to increased prevalence of cancer globally, it has posed a major challenge to healthcare professionals. The main types of cancer accounts for high mortality are lung, stomach, liver, colon and breast cancer. The available treatments of cancer includes surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy etc. but the mainstay of treatments depends on chemotherapy. Since from many decades and even today the major portion of chemotherapy based on intravenous administration of drug, which has its own limitations including lack of safety, inconvenience, and poor patient compliance. In contrast, oral therapy has many advantages, such as ease of administration, improved safety and patient acceptance. Eventually, many anticancer drugs have poor oral bioavailability due to less aqueous solubility, poor permeability, degradation in GIT, P-gp efflux and pre-systemic metabolism. Number of attempts made by pharmaceutical researchers to develop more sophisticated and tumour targeted drug delivery for anticancer drug. In recent years, different strategies were developed successfully to improve safety and efficacy of anticancer drugs like nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanorods, solid lipid nanoparticles, liposomes etc. Etoposide, a semisynthetic derivative of podophyllotoxin used in treatment of many cancer including small cell lung cancer, testicular cancer, childhood leukemia etc. Etoposide, a BCS class IV drug has low and variable oral bioavailability therefore mainly used by intravenous route. newlineIn our present study, we have formulated novel lipid-based drug delivery system of etoposide as nanocochleates to improve its oral bioavailability and efficacy. In this study, we have prepared ET-loaded liposomes using DMPG-Na and cholesterol by ethanol injection method and reverse phase evaporation method. The optimized nanoliposomes then converted to nanocochleates by using trapping method. ET-loaded nanocochleates were characterized and evaluated for in-vivo drug release, in-vitro cytoto