Topical delivery of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor and curcumin-loaded nanostructured lipid carrier gel: Repurposing strategy for the psoriasis management

Abstract

This work investigates the synergistic potential of the nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC) gel of Ibrutinib with Curcumin as a repurposing strategy to treat psoriasis. In the present work, various components such as liquid lipid, solid lipid, and surfactant were selected and optimized based on the solubility of each drug, size, and polydispersity index. The optimized NLC consists of Capryol PGMC as liquid lipid, Glyceryl Mono Stearate as solid lipid, and Pluronics-F-127 as a surfactant. The prepared NLCs have a particle size of 95.12 ± 3.39 nm with PDI of 0.285 ± 0.009, exhibiting high entrapment efficiency (86.04 ± 2.86% for IBR and 87.25 ± 2.14% for CUR) with spherical geometry. CI value of 0.283 suggests synergism. Carbopol 940 was used as a gelling agent and has shown improved flux compared to plain drug gel. Anti-psoriatic studies in BALB/c mice indicated negligible skin irritation and improved histopathological features of psoriasis. Moreover, a reduced amount of inflammatory markers (TNF-alpha, IL-6, IL-22, and IL-23), and psoriasis severity score was observed with prepared gel than the IMQ group. The study suggested integrated benefits of repurposing Ibrutinib with Curcumin as NLC topical gel and it could possibly reduce remission of Psoriasis like inflammation and merit additional investigation.