Oil-entrapped sterculia gum-alginate buoyant systems of aceclofenac: development and in vitro evaluation.

The current investigation deals with the development and optimization of oil-entrapped sterculia gum-alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac by ionotropic emulsion-gelation technique using 3(2) factorial design. The effect of polymer to drug ratio and sodium alginate to sterculia gum ratio on the drug entrapment efficiency (%), and cumulative drug release after 7 h (%) was optimized. The optimized oil-entrapped sterculia gum-alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac (F-O) showed drug entrapment efficiency of 90.92±2.34%, cumulative drug release of 41.65±3.97% after 7 h in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2), and well buoyancy over 8 h in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2) with 5.20 min buoyant lag-time. The in vitro drug release from these buoyant beads followed Korsmeyer-Peppas model (R(2)=0.9866-0.9995) with anomalous (non-Fickian) diffusion drug release mechanism. These new sterculia gum-alginate buoyant beads containing aceclofenac were also characterized using SEM, FTIR, and P-XRD analysis.