Morphological study of alginate/Carbopol beads for oral administration. Application and experimental design for screening study

none5In the present paper, alginate particles were prepared by ionic gelation (Ca 2+) in order to design an oral system that protects 5-ASA up to the colon. To achieve this objective, the incorporation of several polymers (Eudragitâ FS 30D, Eudragitâ S100 and chitosan) in the formulation was studied. In all cases, high entrapment efficiences were obtained. The release behaviour of these polymeric beads were also studied and compared. Finally, the results indicate that Eudragitâ FS 30D (26%) could be a good candidate to be used as a protecting polymer of the drug giving good release profiles. Qt /Q¥ < 0.9 can be described using a Higuchi model and Qt /Q¥ = 0.7 showed a zero-order release period.noneB. Talero; M.L. Gonzalez; J. M. Lopez; A.Fini; A. M. RabascoB. Talero; M.L. Gonzalez; J. M. Lopez; A.Fini; A. M. Rabasc