Preparing amorphous hydrophobic drug nanoparticles by nanoporous membrane extrusion.

The aim of the present study was to develop a simple and straightforward method for formulating hydrophobic drugs into nanoparticulate form in a scalable and inexpensive manner. The nanoporous membrane extrusion (NME) method was used to prepare hydrophobic drug nanoparticles. NME is based on the induced precipitation of drug-loaded nanoparticles at the exits of nanopores. Three common hydrophobic drug models (silymarin, β-carotene and butylated hydroxytoluene) were tested. The authors carefully investigated the morphology, crystallinity and dissolution profile of the resulting nanoparticles. Using NME, the authors successfully prepared rather uniform drug nanoparticles (∼100 nm in diameter). These nanoparticles were amorphous and show an improved dissolution profile compared with untreated drug powders. These studies suggest that NME could be used as a general method to produce nanoparticles of hydrophobic drugs.