Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Taste masking approach to optimize an immunosuppressant loaded rapid disintegrating tablets

5^th International Conference and Exhibition on Pharmaceutics & Novel Drug Delivery Systems

March 16-18, 2015 Crowne Plaza, Dubai, UAE

Ahmed S Zidan1, 2 and Bader M Aljaeid1

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Pharm Anal Acta

Abstract:

This investigation aimed at mining the critical formulation parameters affecting the in vitro performance and palatability of immunosuppressant loaded nanoemulsifying system in oral rapid disintegrating tablets (RDT). The efficiency of the formulation to mask the bitter taste of the drug was assessed using an electronic tongue. RDTs were prepared by lyophilizing the dispersion of nanoemulsion vesicles and synthetic silica followed by direct compression. The influences of the tablet hardness and superdisintegrant concentration were evaluated to optimize critical tablet characteristics. The optimized nanoemulsified formulations showed vesicular size of 48.5 nm, polydispersity index of 0.95, turbidity of 40.7 NTU and rapid drug dissolution and emulsification rate. Assessing the processability of the powders and the produced RDT demonstrated an acceptable flow, hardness and friability. The interaction and Pareto charts showed a higher influence of low hardness value to increase the RDT porosity and hence facilitating their disintegration rather than their deformation by the superdisintegrant action. On the other hand, the employed superdisintegrant concentration was more important to control the drug dissolution rather than the hardness valueand their combined effect. Moreover, the Euclidean distance values and discrimination indices obtained from electronic tongue data analysis showed that the bitter taste and taste aversion effect of the drug were masked in its optimized nanoemulsions incorporated RDTs.