Green Processing of Nanoporous Biodegradable Carriers of Bioactive Agents for Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Applications

Pharmaceutical and biomedical industries demand simple, safe and reproducible processing methods thus urging the development of novel straightforward manufacturing approaches. The product manufacturing by the green processing of admixtures and end-product would avoid long and costly purification (downstream) steps. In this work, the supercritical fluid technology is used for the green processing of nanoporous carriers (aerogels) for bioactive agents [1,2]. Aerogels in the form of one micron-sized particles were processed and loaded with a model bioactive compound (ketoprofen). Results show that the carrier has excellent textural properties (specific surface area of 205 m/g) and a good loading capacity (8 wt.%) of the bioactive compound in the amorphous form. Release profile tests show the capacity of the carrier to modulate the drug release to the medium (pH 1.2 and 7.4). The resulting material can be potentially incorporated in the formulation of several pharmaceutical and biomedical products.