Evidence Hub

Tricaprylin‐based drug crystalline suspension for intramuscular long‐acting delivery of entecavir with alleviated local inflammation

Min Young Jeong, M. Ho, Joon-Soo Park, H. Jeong, J. Kim, Yang-Jin Jang, Doe Myung Shin, I. Yang et al.

Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, 2024

5 citations

Abstract

Abstract In order to ensure prolonged pharmacokinetic profile along with local tolerability at the injection site, tricaprylin‐based drug crystalline suspension (TS) was designed and its local distribution, pharmacokinetics, and inflammatory response, were evaluated with conventional aqueous suspension (AS). As model drug particles, entecavir 3‐palmitate (EV‐P), an ester lipidic prodrug for entecavir (EV), was employed. The EV‐P‐loaded TS was prepared by ultra‐sonication method. Prepared TS and conventional AS exhibited comparable morphology (rod or rectangular), median diameter (2.7 and 2.6 μm), crystallinity (melting point of 160–165°C), and in vitro dissolution profile. However, in vivo performances of drug microparticles were markedly different, depending on delivery vehicle. At AS‐injected site, drug aggregates of up to 500 μm were formed upon intramuscular injection, and were surrounded with inflammatory cells and fibroblastic bands. In contrast, no distinct particle aggregation and adjacent granulation was observed at TS‐injected site, with >4 weeks remaining of the oily vehicle in micro‐computed tomographic observation. Surprisingly, TS exhibited markedly alleviated local inflammation compared to AS, endowing markedly lessened necrosis, fibrosis thickness, inflammatory area, and macrophage infiltration. The higher initial systemic exposure was observed with TS compared to AS, but TS provided prolonged delivery of EV for 3 weeks. Therefore, we suggest that the novel…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free