Spray-dried micro-drug delivery systems: Optimization by Taguchi approach and evaluation of in vitro anti-cancer activities

The low solubility of drugs used in medicine reduces their effectiveness. They are used more than normal doses because they need to remain in a certain dose for a long time. This situation, which is also true for the chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment, negatively affected the quality of life of patients. Therefore the drug delivery systems have been developed and instead of toxic chemotherapeutics, anti-cancer drugs derived from natural plants have been trend. There are many studies related to the activity againts cancer cells of curcumin which is one of the plant extract. However the low stability of curcumin at physioloycal pH, limits its bioavailability in this area. In order to solve these problems, liposomes, micelles, cyclodextrins, microparticles and nanoparticles have recently been used as examples to encapsulate curcumin. Among the natural materials used for these, gelatin is less toxic biodegradable and biocompatible. Hence it is suitable to be used as a drug carrier material. However, it dissolves rapidly in water. Chemical crosslinking agent allows gelatin to remain stable in physiological conditions. Use of glutaraldehyde, widely used as a crosslinking agent, is limited in biological applications due to its toxic nature. In this thesis, gelatin was formed into microparticles in a spray dryer with dialdehyde carboxymethyl cellulose, a cross-linking agent with low toxicity. The effects of the various variables were examined. The spray dryer parameters were optimized with the taguchi statistical approach to minimize particle size and axial ratio. Curcumin was encapsulated with the appropriate experimental conditions selected. Curcumin encapsulated microparticles was characterized and anti-cancer efficiance of curcumin encapsulated microparticles was investigated.