A (polyvinyl caprolactam-polyvinyl acetate-polyethylene glycol graft copolymer)-dispersed sustained-release tablet for imperialine to simultaneously prolong the drug release and improve the oral bioavailability

Imperialine, extracted from Bulbus Fritillariae Cirrhosae, is an efficient antitussive and expectorant medicine. However, its short half-life and stomach degradation limited imperialine from further clinical use. The current study was conducted to develop a sustained-release tablet for imperialine both to prolong absorption time and to improve the oral bioavailability of the drug. The tablets were prepared by a direct compression method formulated on optimized solid dispersion (SD) for imperialine based on polyvinyl caprolactam-polyvinyl acetate-polyethylene glycol graft copolymer (Soluplus(®)) with imperialine/Soluplus(®) ratio of 1:8 (w/w). In order to obtain the optimized formulation, factors that affected the drug release were investigated by in vitro dissolution studies in the media of pH1.2, 5.8, 7.0 and 7.4. Powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope confirmed that the imperialine in SD was amorphous instead of crystalline, and still stayed amorphous even after the direct compression. And besides, pharmacokinetic study in Beagle dogs was performed to inspect the in vivo sustained release. Plasma concentration-time curves and pharmacokinetic parameters were gained. As a result, the Cmax of imperialine was one-fold reduced and Tmax was two-fold prolonged, and the mean AUC0-24 was expressed as 89.581±21.243μgh/L, which showed that the oral bioavailability of imperialine was 2.46-fold improved. Moreover, the in vitro-in vivo correlation was recommended to carry out, demonstrating the percentages of drug release in vitro were well-correlated with the absorptive fraction in vivo with the correlation coefficients above 0.9900. By mathematically modeling and moment imaging of the drug release, Peppas equation was selected as the most fitted model for the sustained-release tablets with the diffusional coefficient in the range of 0.59-0.62, indicating the release of imperialine from the sustained-release tablets was an anomalous process involving polymer swelling, drug diffusion and matrix erosion.