Biodegradable Polymer Nanoparticles of Anti-Tubercular Drug: Formulation and In Vitro Release Studies

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB), has been a serious global health problem, resulting in millions of deaths annually. In India itself, 40% of the population are having Latent TB infection and approximately 10% of infected individuals have higher risk of developing active disease, especially those who are immune compromised like HIV infected and patients on immune suppressants.The Latent TB evolves through different stages to become active disease, hence treating latent infection has better scope in controlling TB. Current TB treatment poses several problems and also leads to emergence of drug resistance strains. The biodegradable nanoparticles are promising drug carriers as it has high stability, less toxic and can release the drug in sustained manner. The objective is to provide a new mode of drug delivery through nanoparticles (NP) incorporated with current anti-tubercular drugs that could solve issues with current drug treatment regimen and make available for treatment of latency and active form of TB in long term. In the present study, single emulsion solvent evaporation method was used to formulate and optimize front line anti-tubercular drug with the polymer Poly (lactic co-glycolic acid) PLGA, which is biocompatible and biodegradable. Characterization studies and determination of drug loading efficiency were studied to know the effect of formulation variables. In vitro drug release study was conducted and reverse phase high pressure liquid chromatography method (RP-HPLC) was developed for the analysis of drug. Hence, optimized PLGA, nanoparticles loaded with anti-tuberculosis drug (ATD) have shown good encapsulation efficiency and drug release profile resulted slow and sustained release over a period of several days. In order to target therapeutic molecules, the biodegradable Nano particulate carriers has the potential for improving the efficacy of TB treatment.