The human eye is a very sensitive organ with a complex physiology. Visual impairment can be the result of various diseases and greatly affects on the quality of life. Many drugs are available for the treatment of ocular defects, but their bioavailability is low, due to the many ocular absorption barriers. Today, the most common way to evaluate the release of the drug from the pharmaceutical form are in vitro dissolution tests.
The main purpose of the Master's thesis was to develop an appropriate in vitro method for evaluating of drug release from an ophthalmic gel, which will have adequate discriminatory capability and robustness. With this aim, in the first stage we performed drug dissolution tests from pharmaceutical forms on various dissolution devices. In vitro tests were first performed on USP Apparatus 2 - together with small paddles and Enhancer® cells, where we evaluated the impact of the addition of different types and concentrations of surfactants in the base solution of PBS pH 7,4. Then we performed a dissolution test in glass beakers - together with glass beads and a shaker, where we tried to illustrate the physiological conditions in the eye as best as possible. In the end, in vitro release tests were performed on USP apparatus 4 with flow cells, where in the second stage, in order to optimize the method, we performed additional analyzes of numerous variations. After preformed tests, we determined the content of the released drug in the samples using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The obtained release profiles were compared with each other, then the amount of dissolved drug at a certain time points and also the variability of the results were evaluated.
With the help of the various devices used, we noticed that the choice of the device affects the obtained drug release profile from the ophthalmic gel. We found that the optimal results were obtained using the USP apparatus 4. Namely, this method proved to be the most discriminatory, reproducible (i.e. low variability of results) and robust. In addition, shorter analysis time allows us to get as close as possible to the physiological conditions in the eye. For the final evaluation of the investigated samples, we chose the following most appropriate combination of parameters dissolving medium: PBS pH 7.4 + 0.5 % Tween 80; medium volume: 160 mL; temperature: 35°C, flow rate: 8 mL/min; volume of sample: 0.2 mL; analysis time: 45 minutes; standard amount of glass beads, Glassfiber PTFE filter.
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