An investigation into the factors governing the degree of dissolution enhancement of solid dispersion for poorly soluble drugs

Abstract

AbstractSolid dispersion (SD) formulation has attracted much attention due to its potential in enhancing dissolution performances of poorly soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Recently, a review on dissolution performances of SDs classifies the improvement into 3 categories, where 82 % of the studies showed improved bioavailability, 8 % showed reduced bioavailability and 10 % revealed similar bioavailability as compared to pure APIs. This indicates the inconsistent degrees of dissolution improvement of poorly soluble APIs in SD. Although a few factors related to the choice of carriers have been suggested to contribute to the dissolution improvement, however, the underlying factor determining the discrepancy in the degree of dissolution improvement remains in vague. It is hypothesized that the API contributes to the degree of dissolution improvement of SD. Hence, the factor of amorphous solubility advantage of API which leads to the different degrees of dissolution enhancement of SD is investigated in this research. Polyvinylpyrrolidone vinyl acetate (PVPVA)-based SD is prepared with three poorly soluble APIs. Physicochemical properties of SD were characterized using infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray powder diffraction. The dissolution efficiency of each SD was calculated and compared to physical mixture and pure API. Theoretical amorphous solubility advantage for each API was calculated using the thermal properties obtained from DSC. The calculated values were found to be correlating well with the dissolution enhancement of the respective SDs. Hence, this theoretical approach can be utilized as an initial screening tool of API candidates in SD formulation during early pharmaceutical development.