Preparation of Pluronic/Bile salt/Phospholipid Mixed Micelles as Drug Solubility Enhancer and Study the Effect of the PPO Block Size on the Solubility of Pyrene

Pluronic/bile salt/phospholipid mixed micelles (Pluronic/BS/PS-MM) drug carrier system for solubilization hydrophobic drugs was developed. A typical hydrophobic compound, pyrene, was selected as a representative hydrophobic compound to model the hydrophobic drugs. Five Pluronics, F68, F88, F98, F108, and F127 with different PPO chain length were studied. CMC data and solubilization capacities were obtained from a pyrene solubilization method. A closed association model was used to obtain the thermodynamic parameters: Gibbs free energy (ΔG°), enthalpy, (ΔH°) and entropy (ΔS°) of micellization. The results obtained from these experiments suggest that the mixed micelles was more stable and solubilize more pyrene than single one; and the solubilization of pyrene was strong effected by the PPO block size, thus accentuating synergistic interaction mechanism in Pluronic/BS/PS-MM. The study generated an important dataset so as to compare the effect of different Pluronics on solubility capacity of Pluronic/BS/PS-MM.