| dc.description.abstract | The peak and valley problems caused by oral administration, injection or other conventional methods, call for developing systems that can deliver therapeutics more effectively. As one of the techniques, diffusion-controlled drug release membranes have significant interest due to great ease with which they can be designed to achieve near-zeroth-order release kinetics. Since diffusion is the rate-limiting step in these systems, determining the permeability and diffusivity of drug molecules in the membrane is therefore important in evaluating drug release performance.
This study focuses on the Membrane Permeation Controlled Release (MPC) system, which involves a non-porous (dense) membrane, comprising of two biopolymers, sericin and chitosan. Ciprofloxacin hydrochloride and (+)-cis-diltiazem hydrochloride were used as hydrophilic model drugs, and nitro-2-furaldehyde semicarbazone (Nitrofurazon) was used as a hydrophobic model drug. Permeation experiments were carried out in a semi-infinite reservoir/receptor system to simulate in-vitro drug release.
The intrinsic permeability and diffusivity (P, D) of the drugs through the membranes were determined using a modified time-lag method based on short time permeation and mass balance method based on long time permeation. The partition coefficients Kd of the drugs in the membranes and the swelling degree of the membranes were determined by sorption/desorption experiments. The diffusivities of the drugs were also determined from the sorption/desorption kinetics. Over the experimental ranges tested, the drug concentration and membrane cross-linking did not have significant effects on these parameters presumably due to the relatively low drug concentrations and mild crosslinkings of the membranes. The diffusivity coefficients of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride, (+)-cis-diltiazem hydrochloride and nitrofurazon in the membranes were found to be in the range of (2.0-2.6)×〖10〗^(-9)±2.6×〖10〗^(-10) cm2/s, (2.5-2.6) ×〖10〗^(-9)±1.1×〖10〗^(-10) and (38-134) ×〖10〗^(-9)±33.1×〖10〗^(-9) (cm2/s), respectively, and their permeability coefficients were in the range of (24-29)×〖10〗^(-8),(51-52) ×〖10〗^(-8) and (131-169) ×〖10〗^(-8) (cm2/s), respectively. The partition coefficients were determined to be around 0.91±0.21, 25±0.12 and 26±0.31, respectively. The diffusivity coefficients determined from sorption experiments for ciprofloxacin hydrochloride, diltiazem hydrochloride and nitrofurazon were found to be in the range of (3.2-7.6) ×〖10〗^(-9)±6.3×〖10〗^(-8), (6-10) ×〖10〗^(-9)±2.6×〖10〗^(-8) and (15-18) ×〖10〗^(-9)±2.7×〖10〗^(-7) (cm2/s), respectively. Also the diffusivity coefficients determined from sorption experiments for ciprofloxacin hydrochloride, diltiazem hydrochloride and nitrofurazon were in the range of (20-47) ×〖10〗^(-9), (12-24) ×〖10〗^(-9) and (11-20) ×〖10〗^(-9) (cm2/s), respectively. Nonetheless the differences in the diffusivities calculated from permeation and sorption/desorption experiments are considered to be acceptable, in view of the different experimental techniques used in this work, for the purpose of comparison of the membrane diffusivity and permeability. | en |
