Formulation and Evaluation of Novel Sericin Nanoparticles for Buccal Delivery of Antihypertensive Drug

Abstract
The aim of this study is to prepare and evaluate sericin nanoparticles (NPs) of Verapamil Hcl which are finally formulated as buccal gel. It was envisaged to formulate the nanoparticles with gelatine, sericin and genipin. Nanoparticles incorporated gel was successfully prepared by using carbopol 934. Nanoparticles were prepared by dessolvation followed by crosslinking. Various parameters like drug content, viscosity, pH, spreadability and drug release were used to obtain the optimized formulation. The sericin nanoparticles incorporated gel shows better fast release as compare to API. The obtained results like drug content, % drug release, buccal permeation study confirmed the potential of nanoparticles as good carrier for buccal administration. The optimised sericin nanoparticles range between 100-400 nm with a zeta potential of 29.91mv showing good stability. Later, we proved our hypothesis through In vitro studies for pharmacokinetics, where we found that NPs had better bioavailability than API. NPs showed protective action and maintained normal tissue architecture. We concluded that nanoparticle form of verapamil had better bioavailability and good pharmacological actions, which might be beneficial for future formulation design perspective.