Solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructure lipid carriers : in vitro lipolysis study

Trabalho Final de Mestrado Integrado, Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Farmácia, 2014Nanoparticle research is, at present, one of the most studied branches of science and is emerging as one of the fastest growing areas which crosses several domains of science in fields such as biology, medicine, optics, electronics or pharmaceutical technology among others. Concerning pharmaceutical technology, nanoparticle research has gained much attention and spurred exponential growth in applications to medicine. In recent years, it has emerged as a strategy to tackle problems associated with drug delivery. Oral drug delivery systems are one of the most ancient, common and easiest way to administer drugs. However, there are some limitations to its use, like poor drug solubility, insufficient drug concentration due to poor absorption, rapid or slow metabolism, bad distribution and elimination or even unpredictable plasma levels after administration that can affect this type of systems and can, therefore, be responsible for a failure in therapy. Based on the features of lipids, the devolvement of lipid nanoparticles such as Solid Lipid Nanoparticles (SLN) and Nanostructure Lipid Carriers (NLC) tries to overcome drug delivery problems. The aim of the following work was to produce SLN composed of Precirol® and NLC composed of a mixture of Precirol® and Labrafac® and to study their in vitro digestion profile. Lipids are digested in the gastrointestinal tract and presently it’s known that lipolytic enzymes activities are responsible for the digestion of SLN/NLC. So the propose of this work was to understand the role of interactions between oral lipid based formulation and gastrointestinal lipid digestions and how they influence the formulation performance.Università Degli Studi Di Pavia, Dipartimento di Scienze del Farmaco