Lyophilized mucoadhesive-dendrimer enclosed matrix tablet for extended oral delivery of albendazole

Dendrimers are multifunctional carriers widely employed for delivering drugs in a variety of disease conditions including HIV/AIDS and cancer. Albendazole (ABZ) is a commonly used anthelmintic drug in human as well as veterinary medicine. In this investigation, ABZ was formulated as a "muco-dendrimer" based sustained released tablet. The mucoadhesive complex was synthesized by anchoring chitosan to fifth generation PPI dendrimer (Muco-PPI) and characterized by UV, FTIR, (1)H NMR spectroscopy and electron microscopy. ABZ was entrapped inside Muco-PPI followed by lyophilization and tableting as matrix tablet. A half-life (t1/2) of 8.06±0.15, 8.17±0.47, 11.04±0.73, 11.49±0.92, 12.52±1.04 and 16.9±1.18h was noted for ABZ (free drug), conventional ABZ tablet (F1), conventional ABZ matrix tablet (F2), PPI-ABZ complex, PPI-ABZ matrix tablet (F3) and Muco-PPI-ABZ matrix tablet (F4), respectively. Thus the novel mucoadhesive-PPI based formulation of ABZ (F4) increased the t1/2 of ABZ significantly by almost twofold as compared to the administration of free drug. The in vivo drug release data showed that the Muco-PPI based formulations have a significantly higher Cmax (2.40±0.02μg/mL) compared with orally administered free ABZ (0.19±0.07μg/mL) as well as conventional tablet (0.20±0.05μg/mL). In addition, the Muco-PPI-ABZ matrix tablet displayed increased mean residence time (MRT) and is therefore a potential candidate to appreciably improve the pharmacokinetic profile of ABZ.