12th International Conference of Pharmaceutical Sciences

The nasal route is widely explored for the administration of systemic drugs, mainly for those that act on the central nervous system, such as cannabidiol. The main limitation of the route is mucociliary clearance, which causes low bioavailability of the drug. Thus, nanostructured lipid carriers loaded with cannabidiol were developed and Poloxamer 407® and Pluronic F 68® were added to the NLC dispersion due to their in situ gelling ability, in order to increase the permanence time of the drug in the nasal mucosa. The gelation behavior, bioadhesive properties, rheology, and in vitro release of the systems were studied. Gelation of NLC dispersion at nasal temperature and mucoadhesion of NLC-gelled in the porcine intestinal mucosa were observed. The formulations showed pseudoplastic and thixotropic behavior. And the release studies showed that both NLC dispersion and gelled-NLC dispersion were able to control the drug delivery, demonstrating potential for nasal administration of cannabidiol.