Liqui-Mass Technology as a Novel Tool to Produce Sustained Release Liqui-Tablet Made from Liqui-Pellets

The Liqui-Mass technology (also known as Liqui-Pellet technology) has shown promising results in terms of enhancing the drug release rate of water insoluble drugs in a simplistic approach. However, there is no current study on sustained-release formulation using the Liqui-Mass technology. In this study, an attempt was made to produce a sustained-release Liqui-Tablet for the first time using a matrix-based approach.

The non-volatile co-solvent used in the investigation included Tween 80, Tween 20 and Kolliphor EL. The production of sustained-release propranolol hydrochloride Liqui-Tablet was successful, and data from the saturation solubility test and dissolution test did not show much difference among the mentioned non-volatile co-solvent. The best Liqui-Tablet formulation took 24 h for drug release to reach at around 100%. There seemed to be a synergistic retarding drug release effect when a non-volatile co-solvent and Eudragit RS PO were used together. The increase of Eudragit RS PO concentration increased the retardant effect.

Kinetic drug release analysis suggests that the best formulation followed the Higuchi model. The flowability of pre-compressed Liqui-Tablet pellets had no issues and its size distribution was narrow. Liqui-Tablet was generally robust and most formulations passed the friability test. The study revealed that Liqui-Mass technology can be employed to sustain drug release.

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Materials:

Propranolol hydrochloride (TCI, Tokyo, Japan); Avicel PH-102 (FMC Corp., Philadelphia, PA, USA); Aerosil 300 (Evonik Industries AG, Hanau, Germany); propylene glycol (Acros Organic, Fisher Scintific, Loughborough, UK); Tween 80 (Acros Organic, Fisher Scintific, Loughborough, UK); Tween 20 (Acros, Geel, Belgium); Kolliphor EL (BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany) and Eudragit RS PO (Evonik, Essen, Germany). All other reagents and solvent were of analytical grades.

Article information: Lam, M.; Nashed, N.; Nokhodchi, A. Liqui-Mass Technology as a Novel Tool to Produce Sustained Release Liqui-Tablet Made from Liqui-Pellets. Pharmaceutics 2021, 13, 1049. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics13071049