Development of a Microgram Scale Video-Microscopic Method to Investigate Dissolution Behavior of Poorly Water-Soluble Drugs

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Poor aqueous solubility is a common characteristic of new drug candidates, which leads to low or inconsistent oral bioavailability. This has sparked an interest in material efficient testing of solubility and dissolution rate. The aim was to develop a microgram scale video-microscopic method to screen the dissolution rates of poorly water-soluble drugs. This method was applied to six drugs (carvedilol, diazepam, dipyridamole, felodipine, fenofibrate, and indomethacin) in fasted state simulated intestinal fluid (FaSSIF), of indomethacin in buffer with varying pH, and of diazepam and dipyridamole in customized media. An additional aim was to track phase transformations for carbamazepine in FaSSIF. The dissolution rates and particle behavior of the drugs were investigated by tracking particle surface area over time using optical video-microscopy. Applying miniaturized UV spectroscopic dissolution resulted in a similar grouping of dissolution rates and pH effects, as for the video-microscopic setup. Using customized media showed that lysophospholipid enhanced the dissolution rate of diazepam and dipyridamole. The video-microscopic setup allowed for the nucleation of transparent particles on dissolving carbamazepine particles to be tracked over time. The developed setup offers a material efficient screening approach to group drugs according to dissolution rate, where the use of optical microscopy helps to achieve a high sample throughput. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].

Original languageEnglish
Article number173
JournalAAPS PharmSciTech
Volume23
Issue number6
ISSN1530-9932
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
M.B.S’s research stay was sponsored by BioSense Solutions ApS. JP was partly funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) under File No. 8054-00056B.

    Research areas

  • bio-relevant dissolution, dissolution rate, poorly water-soluble drugs, preformulation, video-microscopy

ID: 314962792