In vitro release study of the polymeric drug nanoparticles: Development and validation of a novel method

The in vitro release study is a critical test to assess the safety, efficacy, and quality of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems, but there is no compendial or regulatory standard. The variety of testing methods makes direct comparison among different systems difficult. We herein proposed a novel sample and separate (SS) method by combining the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) apparatus II (paddle) with well-validated centrifugal ultrafiltration (CU) technique that efficiently separated the free drug from nanoparticles. Polymeric drug nanoparticles were prepared by using a four-stream multi-inlet vortex mixer with d-α-tocopheryl polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate as a stabilizer. Itraconazole, cholecalciferol, and flurbiprofen were selected to produce three different nanoparticles with particle size <100 nm. By comparing with the dialysis membrane (DM) method and the SS methods using syringe filters, this novel SS + CU technique was considered the most appropriate in terms of the accuracy and repeatability to provide the in vitro release kinetics of nanoparticles. Interestingly, the DM method appeared to misestimate the release kinetics of nanoparticles through separate mechanisms. This work offers a superior analytical technique for studying in vitro drug release from polymeric nanoparticles, which could benefit the future development of in vitro-in vivo correlation of polymeric nanoparticles.