efficacy because of poor solubility, poor stability in highly acidic pH, first pass hepatic metabolism, risk of toxicity, and poor stability that lowers drug level below therapeutic concentration in blood, resulting in minimal or no therapeutic effect. 5 Among the many advantages of transdermal drug delivery are the avoidance of hepatic first pass metabolism and the maintenance of steady blood levels over an extended period of time, hence dosing frequency is reduced that decreases gastrointestinal irritation and improved the patient compliance for long term treatment. Chances of overdose or under dose can be reduced by removing the patch from the target site at any time that will end the treatment. [5][6][7] Based on literature survey, we have chosen quercetin, curcuminoids, and berberine HCl for herbal patch formulation since they have anti-inflammatory, anti-acne, antibacterial, and antioxidant characteristics. 5,[8][9][10][11] So the development of herbal patch formulation was the goal of the present work to enhance patient compliance and to control the drug release from patches to enhance bioavailability. For that preliminary screening was done for screening of polymers and plasticizers. The effect of ABSTRACT Background: More than 85% of young people around the world suffer from acne vulgaris, which is the most prevalent chronic inflammatory skin illness. The study's objective was to develop a herbal patch formulation contained quercetin, curcuminoids, and berberine HCl for the treatment of acne that utilizing ethyl cellulose and HPMC K4M as polymers and propylene glycol as a plasticizer. Materials and Methods: Drug excipient compatibility study was performed using FT-IR. Preliminary trial was done for screening of polymers and plasticizer concentrations. The combined influence of the two independent variables, namely the concentration of HPMC K4M and ethyl cellulose, on the dependent variables, tensile strength and cumulative % drug release at 24 hr, was examined using a 3 2 full factorial design. Patches were evaluated for physicochemical parameters. Results: Drug excipient compatibility study revealed that drug and excipients are compatible with each other. The optimized formulation (C0) showed tensile strength 2.56 kg/cm 2 , cumulative percentage drug release of quercetin, berberine HCl, and curcuminoids at 24 hr were 94.02%, 64.66%, and 94.21%, respectively. Tensile strength increased with an amount of HPMC K4M and Ethyl cellulose increases, the cumulative percentage of drug release decreased as HPMC K4M and ethyl cellulose concentrations were raised. Conclusion: Optimized herbal patch formulation had shown good physico-chemical and mechanical properties. The research shows that the developed formulation has the potential to be a useful replacement for the present medications in the market.

Quercetin, curcumin and berberine HCl have anti-acne, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant properties. In the present study an attempt has been made to develop a simple, precise, rapid, selective and cost-effective high-performance thin-layer chromatographic (HPTLC) method for simultaneous estimation of quercetin, curcumin and berberine HCl from polyherbal gel prepared for the treatment of Acne. The method was developed using HPTLC silica gel GF254 precoated aluminium plate as a stationary phase. The solvent system consisted of Toluene, Ethyl acetate, Methanol, Formic acid. Densitometric analysis was carried out in the absorbance mode at 254nm. This system was found to give compact spots for quercetin, curcumin and berberine HCl at specific Rf values. The linearity of quercetin, curcumin and berberine HCl were obtained between 200 and 1000 ng/spot with good correlation coefficient values. The % of quercetin, curcumin and berberine HCl from polyherbal gel was found to be 99.42±0.98, 98.67±0.76% and 99.6±1.06% respectively, which was well within the limit. It was concluded that the developed HPTLC method would be an important tool in the quality control of polyherbal formulations.