S.R. Badari’s scientific contributions

Nimesulide is a poorly soluble, highly permeable drug and the rate of its oral absorption is often controlled by the dissolution rate in the gastrointestinal tract. The poor dissolution rate of water-insoluble drugs is a major problem to convert them in to a suitable dosage form which is having optimum therapeutic effects. There are several techniques to enhance the dissolution of poorly soluble drugs. Among them, the technique of liquisolid compacts is a promising technique towards such a novel aim. Several liquisolid tablets formulations are prepared by using PEG-400 as a non-volatile liquid vehicle, microcrystalline cellulose, Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose-E15, starch were used as carrier materials and nm-sized silica gel was used as coating materials. The empirical method as introduced by Spireas and Bolton (1999) was applied strictly to calculate the amounts of coating and carrier materials required to prepare nimesulide liquisolid tablets. Quality control tests, i. e. uniformity of tablet weight, uniformity of drug content, tablet hardness, friability test and dissolution tests were performed to evaluate each batch of prepared tablets. In vitro drug dissolution profiles of the liquisolid formulations were studied and compared with conventional formulation in simulated intestinal fluid (pH 7. 4). Fourier transform infrared were used to investigate physicochemical interaction between nimesulide and the other excipients. It was found that liquisolid tablets formulated with microcrystalline cellulose produced high dissolution profile with acceptable tablet properties. The results showed that liquisolid compacts demonstrated significantly higher drug release rates than those of conventionally prepared directly compressible tablets. This was due to an increase in wetting properties and surface of drug available for dissolution.