Abstract
Gefitinib (GFB) is an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor used primarily to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but it also works by lowering AKT and MAPK phosphorylation, which makes it effective against the breast cancer cells. A high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for detecting gefitinib by C18 analytical column with mobile phase containing acetonitrile and 1 % w/v ammonium acetate in water with ratio of 60:40. Box-Behnken design was used to optimize the chromatographic conditions, and method was validated for accuracy, precision, linearity, robustness, ruggedness, limit of detection, and limit of quantification. The developed method was found to be useful in estimating gefitinib in conventional marketed tablet dosage forms and nanoformulations such as SLNs and liposomes. With a calibration curve, linearity was attained in the drug concentration range of 8–56 µg/mL (r2 = 0.9996), and sensitivity was found to be 1.3 and 3.9 µg/mLas LOD and LOQ, respectively. All the validation criteria for the method were within the acceptable limits. The drug content in the conventional tablet formulation was found to be 99.99 %. The HPLC analysis indicated that gefitinib was highly soluble in Precirol ATO5 as solid lipid and tween 80 as surfactant. Drug entrapment efficiency was found to be 83.1 % and 80.5 % for SLNs and liposomes respectively. In vitro release data revealed that 30 % of drug was released from plain suspension and more than 77 % released from both nanoformulations after 24 h at pH 7.4 respectively. By applying kinetic fit, data was most appropriately fitted into first order as compared to other. The apparent permeability of gefitinib from plain suspension, SLNs and Liposomes was found to be 3.98 × 10−4 cm/min, 1.35 × 10−4 cm/min and 1.79 × 10−4 cm/min.