Formulation And Evaluation Of Buccal Film Of Voriconazole Drug For The Treatment Of Oral Thrush

Abstract

Oral thrush is a fungal infection occurs when the fungus candida albicans grows excessively in the mouth. Voriconazole is an antifungal drug with half life 6 hours having advantages from a tolerability standpoint. Voriconazole has bitter taste thus to improve palatability, the drug was complexed with beta cyclodextrin in ratio (1:3) using kneading method by optimizing the kneading time. Taste evaluation was done by human volunteer. The buccal route was selected to provide rapid onset of action and targeted drug delivery. The formulation was optimized using 3² factorial design. The optimized drug-beta cyclodextrin complex was incorporated in FDBF by solvent casting method using HPMC E5 and PVA as polymers and PEG 400 as plasticizer. The prepared films were evaluated for their physicochemical properties including thickness, surface pH, folding endurance, disintegration time, drug content, in vitro dissolution and in vitro antifungal activity. Among all batches, formulation F3 showed the most promising results, with drug content 98.30%, disintegration time 32 second and 97.51 % drug release in 6 minutes with suitable strength and flexibility. It can be concluded that the development of fast dissolving buccal film of voriconazole produce fast onset of action and targeted drug delivery, improve patient compliance and effective management of fungal infection.