The College of Pharmacy discussed the Master’s thesis entitled “Formulation and evaluation of lercandipine HCl loaded nanomicelles as a sublingual delivery system” by student Hala Mohammed Fatih Mousa and her supervisor Assistant Professor Dr. Kawthar Khalid Al-Joudi in the Pharmaceutics Department.The study aims to enhance the dissolution rate of lercanidipine using nanomicelle technology and enable its incorporation into a sublingual oral film to increase the drug’s bioavailability.Eleven different nanomicelle formulations were prepared using the thin-film hydration method and employing a range of carriers. The results showed the efficacy of TPGS and Tween 80 carriers prepared at a 7:5 ratio, resulting in micelles with a size of 70 nm, a PDI of 0.16, a drug loading of 88%, and a release rate of 98.7% in 45 minutes. The results also demonstrated the benefit of loading the drug in micelle form, resulting in a drug release from the sublingual film of 95% in 10 minutes, which is significantly higher than the drug release rate from the film prepared using the pure drug.The study concluded the importance and role of nanomicelles in improving drug solubility, which enables its loading into oral films for sublingual administration.The study recommended conducting a permeability and bioavailability studies to confirm the efficacy of the prepared pharmaceutical dosage form.One of the research papers resulting from this study will be published in a Q2 Scopus-indexed journal.
