Development and Evaluation of Nateglinide Loaded Polycaprolactone Nanoparticles

To observe the effect of Polycaprolactone on Nateglinide release from its nanoparticulate dosage form, the drug and polymer were dissolved in mixture of organic solvent. This solution was homogenized with high speed followed by high pressure homogenizer in surfactant containing aqueous solution. The obtained nanoparticles after solvent evaporation and freeze drying were characterized for particle size, zeta potential, X-ray diffraction, encapsulation efficiency, in-vitro dissolution and drug release kinetics. The developed nanoparticles are in size range of 142.53±6.42 nm to 281.34±3.48 nm. The zeta potential value of most encapsulated formulation batch was +30.2. Nateglinide is crystalline in nature with 86.1% crystallinity but the developed encapsulated nanoparticles showed decrease in crystallinity up to 32.5%. The results showed that the drug released was increased gradually from first hour (7.06±0.24%) to 10^th hour (23.13±0.25%) and after that it released in controlled manner up to 24 hours (27.63±1.82%). Polycaprolactone controlled the release of Nateglinide efficiently up to 24 hours. From the release kinetic models it was observed that the dissolution pattern follows Higuchi model.