parameters

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has managed to successfully enhance the quality of life for HIV infected patients. Efavirenz (EFV) is one of the recommended first-line anti-HIV drugs in the WHO guidelines and used mostly in developing countries. Challenges include: • Low aqueous solubility (4 μg/ml) • Low bioavailability (40 – 45%) • High doses taken daily and side effects This CSIR project aims to nano-encapsulate an anti-HIV drug into a biodegradable polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer. The nano-encapsulation into polymeric material can protect these drugs from physiological conditions. Controlled and steady drug release can also be achieved as the polymer degrades, resulting in a reduced number of administration schedules, with reduced dosing frequency and increased bio-availability due to the increased surface area of the nano-encapsulated drug. PROPOSED SOLUTION In this work, encapsulation of EFV in PCL will be investigated using a scalable spray drying technique and a Taguchi experimental design method to obtain the optimum formulation for preparing nanoparticles. Figure 1: Schematic diagram of polymeric nano-carriers EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In this study, a standard orthogonal array L8 was used to examine a seven factor system at two levels, as shown in Table 1