Improving the 6-Aminopenicillanic acid release process using vermiculite-alginate biocomposite bead on drug delivery system

Abstract

The present study deals with developing vermiculite (VMT)-alginate (Alg) composites with different cross-linker concentrations (CaCl₂) to deliver the controlled 6-aminopenicillin acid (6-APA). The Characterization of synthesized composites was conducted by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses. Optimization attempts were explored via the response surface method (RSM) to best predict the actual amount of compound. The adsorption capacity of 6-APA onto this adsorbent was found to be 208.33 mg/g, which was higher than that for other clays. The equilibrium and Kinetic studies (chemical reaction and diffusion-based models) indicated that drug absorption on VMT-Alg is homogeneous with chemical interaction. An increase in cross-linker (CaCl₂) concentration leads to improvement in the drug encapsulation efficiency while having no significant effect on loading efficiency. The in-vitro release of the pure drug shows a rapid burst release followed by 100% cumulative release within 6 h. Whereas, the synthesized drug with Alg substantially showed less release of 43% after 8 h. Release experiments revealed that the presence of the CaCl₂ delayed the release of the 6-APA less than 35% after 12 h. The kinetic release of 6-APA is followed by the Korsmeyer-Peppas model based on Fick's law mechanism due to the kinetic exponent (n < 0.5). All studied composites antibacterial activity after 24 h exposure against E. Coli and S. aureus. The antibacterial activities of composites were evaluated by the halo of no growth. The results showed that the VMT-Alg-6APA composite had strong activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.

Keywords:

• 6-Aminopenicillanic acid
• equilibrium and kinetic studies
• drug release
• antibacterial activity
• vermiculite-alginate biocomposite

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.