Abstract
The interest of the pharmaceutical industry in lipid drug delivery systems due to their prolonged release profile, biocompatibility, reduction of side effects, and so on is already known. However, conventional methods of preparation of these structures for their use and production in the pharmaceutical industry are difficult since these methods are usually multi-step and involve high amount of organic solvent. Furthermore, some processes need extreme conditions, which can lead to an increase of heterogeneity of particle size and degradation of the drug. An alternative for drug delivery system production is the utilization of supercritical fluid technique. Lipid particles produced by supercritical fluid have shown different physicochemical properties in comparison to lipid particles produced by classical methods. Such particles have shown more physical stability and narrower size distribution. So, in this paper, a critical overview of supercritical fluid-based processes for the production of lipid micro- and nanoparticles is given and the most important characteristics of each process are highlighted.
Highlights
Nowadays, the utilization of supercritical fluid-based technology is considered as a promising substitute to the traditional methods of particle production since it is an efficient and environment-friendly technique
Supercritical fluids are defined as substances for which both temperature and pressure are above critical values
The starting point for all conventional methods of liposome production is the dissolution of phospholipids in an organic solvent, and the main difference between these methods is the way in which the lipid membrane is dispersed in aqueous media [20,21,22,23,24,25]
Summary
The utilization of supercritical fluid-based technology is considered as a promising substitute to the traditional methods of particle production since it is an efficient and environment-friendly technique. The starting point for all conventional methods of liposome production is the dissolution of phospholipids in an organic solvent, and the main difference between these methods is the way in which the lipid membrane is dispersed in aqueous media [20,21,22,23,24,25] These methods have some drawbacks in common, such as the large number of steps needed to produce the vesicles, the utilization of a large amount of organic solvent in the beginning or during the process, the lack of diameter size uniformity and, the low stability of produced particles [26]. Thereafter the expansion, lipids were precipitated, brought in contact with the aqueous solution, and kept in the recycling loop for other 30 min in order to form liposomes Liposomes obtained by this process presented a bimodal distribution with an average size of 200 nm, and this method used 15 times less organic solvent to get the same encapsulation efficiency as conventional techniques. The decrease of the pressure forces the evaporation of CO2, leading to the supersaturation and precipitation of the solid that is collected from the gaseous stream [45,46]
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