Pluronics
(tri-block copolymers) have a significant role in the
pharmaceutical industry and are being used to enhance the solubility
and delivery of hydrophobic drugs in different marketed formulations.
However, instability and unsatisfactory drug-loading capacity are
the major weak spots of these pluronic micelles. The present research
work is designed to solve the existing issues by the solubilization
study of hydrophobic drugs in different pluronic micelles at variable
temperatures. The solubilization of the hydrophobic antiepileptic
drug lamotrigine (LAM) in five different pluronic micelles viz. P84,
P85, F127, F108, and F68 was studied at different temperatures, 37,
47, and 57 °C, using UV–visible spectroscopy. The solubilization
of LAM in pluronic micelles increased with the increase in temperature.
Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements were used to observe
the morphological and structural changes taking place in pluronics
by increasing the temperature. The SANS results showed the morphological
changes of spherical P84 micelles to prolate ellipsoidal micelles
at 57 °C due to remarkable increase in the aggregation number.
This morphological conversion was further confirmed by the heat transfer
method (HTM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements. DLS
measurements confirmed that LAM-loaded micelles showed a greater hydrodynamic
diameter (
D
h
) compared to unloaded micelles,
assuring LAM solubilization in the pluronic micelles. The rate of
controlled release of LAM from five different pluronic micelles was
accessed by using different kinetic models to evaluate the in vitro
release profile. This is the first report in which HTM measurements
are established for the analysis of morphological changes in the thermoresponsive
pluronic micelles in real time. The present work corroborates how
we can control the drug-loading capacity, morphological structure
of the drug carrier, as well as drug release by simply changing the
temperature of pluronic micellar media.