Oral administration of ceftriaxone associated with a bile acid-based new oral carrier, cholylethylenediamine, in 50% propylene glycol to rats at doses of 25 and 50 mg/kg of body weight resulted in a significant increase in intestinal absorption, as evidenced by 55% improvement in the bioavailability, whereas ceftriaxone alone showed a bioavailability of less than 1%.The introduction of new oral cephalosporins, or formulation development of existing and highly promising parenteral cephalosporins, provides a possibility for follow-up oral treatment after initial parenteral treatment, thus reducing hospitalization time and costs (5,6,14). Ceftriaxone (CRO) is a widely used injectable broad-spectrum cephalosporin that exhibits potent activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria (1, 2, 11, 12). However, the therapeutic utility of ceftriaxone is limited, as it requires parenteral infusion for its administration. In this respect, the development of an oral formulation of CRO would be helpful in rapid and proper step-down therapy that would lead to better patient compliance without compromising the therapeutic activity.In a previous study, we developed a new oral delivery carrier based on bile acids, which could improve the oral bioavailability of therapeutically active peptides without damaging the tissue structure of the mucous membrane (8, 9). Based on the observation that associated bile acid could increase the absorption of a poorly absorbable drug in the intestine, we prepared a positively charged carrier by simple modification of bile acid, cholic acid, with ethylenediamine for the negatively charged small organic molecules, CRO. This scheme was designed with the goal of preparing a carrier that could physically associate with the drug by ion pair interaction to improve its lipophilicity without altering the structure of the native drug. In the present study, we show that the positively charged bile acid analogue forms a complex with CRO and report the impact of this association on the oral bioavailability.Cholylethylendiamine (CEA) was synthesized by using cholic acid and ethylenediamine as precursors. A delivery agent was composed of the hydrophobic part of bile acid and the positive charge of ethylenediamine, thereby facilitating an ionpairing interaction with anionic drug, CRO. The complex formation in aqueous medium was reversible and dependent on the molar ratio between CRO and the delivery agent. Since CRO/CEA complexes showed significantly reduced solubility in water, the lyophilized drug complex was reformulated by the addition of one of the most common water-soluble solvents, propylene glycol (PG) (15), as a prototype formulation.The partition coefficients of CRO/CEA complexes were investigated in an n-octanol/water system. CRO concentrations were analyzed on a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatograph (RP-HPLC) (Shimadzu, Tokyo, Japan) as previously described (3). Briefly, a 50-l aliquot of supernatant was injected into an RP-HPLC fitted with an Eclipse XDB analytical column (25...