Improvement of solubility of celecoxib by inclusion in MCM-41 mesoporous silica: drug loading and release

Celecoxib is a poorly water-soluble nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Here we report four ordered mesoporous silica MCM-41 supports with different particle size, pore volume, and surface properties to investigate their loading capacity with celecoxib and their release abilities. Spherical MCM-41 mesoporous supports less than 50 nm in diameter were prepared and to compare the effect of the template removal process on morphology of samples, acid extraction and calcination methods were used. Moreover, nearly 500 nm sized rod-shaped MCM-41 mesoporous silica was obtained by changing the template concentration in preparation. Boron doping was performed to determine the effect of a heteroatom on the surface of mesoporous silica and adsorbance of drug molecules and release. In order to investigate the effect of polarity of solvent during drug loading, two different solvents were used: ethanol as polar solvent and hexane as nonpolar solvent. All bare and drug-loaded samples’ physicochemical characterizations were performed. The release experiments were conducted in phosphate buffer solution of pH 7.4 at 37 °C. Celecoxib solubility was highly improved compared to the pure drug. The morphology and surface property differences of MCM-41 and the solvent effect in adsorption of celecoxib have been discussed, including its delivery.