Oil-entrapped sterculia gum–alginate buoyant systems of aceclofenac: Development and in vitro evaluation

Abstract

The current investigation deals with the development and optimization of oil-entrapped sterculia gum–alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac by ionotropic emulsion–gelation technique using 32 factorial design. The effect of polymer to drug ratio and sodium alginate to sterculia gum ratio on the drug entrapment efficiency (%), and cumulative drug release after 7h (%) was optimized. The optimized oil-entrapped sterculia gum–alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac (F-O) showed drug entrapment efficiency of 90.92±2.34%, cumulative drug release of 41.65±3.97% after 7h in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2), and well buoyancy over 8h in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2) with 5.20min buoyant lag-time. The in vitro drug release from these buoyant beads followed Korsmeyer–Peppas model (R2=0.9866–0.9995) with anomalous (non-Fickian) diffusion drug release mechanism. These new sterculia gum–alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac were also characterized using SEM, FTIR, and P-XRD analysis.