¹Government College of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutics Department, Kathora Naka, Amravati, Maharashtra- 444604, India
²Government College of Pharmacy, Quality Assurance Department, Kathora Naka, Amravati, Maharashtra- 444604, India DOI : 10.35333/jrp.2020.225 The purpose of the present study was to explore the scope of natural gum to control the drug releases and develop multiparticulate sustained drug delivery system for lornoxicam. Lornoxicam pellets were prepared using copal gum and pectin as natural release retarding polymers by extrusion and spheronization. A central composite design was employed as copal gum (X1) and pectin (X2) independent variables to optimize the lornoxicam pellets in terms of sustained release, production yield, sphericity, and flowability. The response (Y1) as percentage drug releases at 10 h, (Y2) time (t50) required to 50% drug release, (Y3) % yield and (Y4) average pellets size were measured for each trial and statistical equations with significant interaction terms were derived to predict relation. All the batches have excellent flow properties with angle of repose in the range of 11.57±0.33° to 15.94±0.84°, and carr’s index and hausner’s ratio in the range of 10.17±1.34% to 15.97±1.62% and 1.11±0.04 to 1.19±0.09, respectively. The drug release studies indicated that as the concentrations of polymers increases the drug release decreases, producing sustained release of lornoxicam. Among the multiparticulate batches, batch F7 was found to be optimized based on the criteria of attaining the minimum particle size (<871.49 μm), the maximum value of drug released Q10 of 83.20%, t50 of 5.13 h, percent yield of 67.52% and particle size of 820.24 μm. The sustained release pellets showed hixon-crowell model as best fit model and follow anomalous kinetics (non-fickian transport) for drug release. Keywords : Lornoxicam; pellets; copal gum; pectin; central composite design