Lung-targeted delivery system of curcumin loaded gelatin microspheres

Figures & data

Figure 1.  Chemical structure of curcumin.

Table 1.  Factors and levels of the orthogonal design.

Levels	Factors
	A	B	C	D
1	1:4	10:200	2.0%	20%
2	1:5	15:200	1.5%	15%
3	1:6	20:200	1.0%	10%

A: volume ratio of aqueous solution and oil phase. B: weight ratio of drug and polymer. C: surfactant concentration. D: gelatin concentration.

Table 2.  Result of the orthogonal design experiment.

No.	A	B	C	D	S (%)
1	1	1	1	1	27.50
2	1	2	2	2	52.00
3	1	3	3	3	71.50
4	2	1	2	3	66.90
5	2	2	3	1	55.40
6	2	3	1	2	71.90
7	3	1	3	2	61.00
8	3	2	1	3	75.50
9	3	3	2	1	50.01
K1	50.33	51.80	58.30	44.30
K2	64.73	60.97	56.30	61.63
K3	62.17	64.47	62.63	71.30
R	14.40	12.67	6.33	27.00

(A: volume ratio of aqueous solution and oil phase. B: weight ratio of drug and polymer. C: surfactant concentration. D: gelatin concentration.)

Figure 2.  C-GMS powder.

Figure 3.  SEM image of C-GMS (×4000).

Figure 4.  Particle size distributions.

Figure 5.  DSC thermograms curves (a: crude curcumin, b: blank gelatin microspheres, c: C-GMS, d: gelatin, e: mixture of curcumin and gelatin).

Figure 6.  Release profiles of curcumin and C-GMS.

Figure 7.  Drug distribution in various tissues following intravenous administration of curcumin solution.

Figure 8.  Drug distributions in various tissues following intravenous administration of C-GMS suspension.

Table 3.  Ce of different tissues (each value represents the mean ± SD, n = 3).

Tissue	Blood	Heart	Liver	Spleen	Lung	Kidney
Cmaxp(μg/g)	0.095	0.091	0.136	0.162	4.053	0.121
Cmaxs(μg/g)	8.526	0.127	0.103	0.103	0.112	0.475
Ce	0.011	0.717	1.32	1.573	36.19	0.255

Figure 9.  Photomicrographs of lung tissue sections (×400▪A for control group and B for microsphere group).