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Long Acting Ionically Paired Pamoate-based Suspension of Lurasidone: An exploration of Size Effects on in vitro Dissolution and in vivo Pharmacokinetic Behaviors

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Abstract

Latuda® is an oral tablet approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of schizophrenia. However, the clinical efficacy of Latuda® is compromised by patient noncompliance due to frequent daily administration, especially for patients experiencing severe schizophrenia, whose medication is often needed for several months to years. Hence, developing a long-acting injectable formulation of lurasidone is urgently needed. Herein, a poorly water-soluble lurasidone pamoate (LP) salt was synthesized via the facile ion pair-based salt formation technology. The solubility of LP was decreased by 233 folds compared with that of lurasidone hydrochloride (LH). Furthermore, suspensions of LH and LP with three different particle sizes, including 400 nm small-sized nanocrystals (SNCs), 4 μm medium-sized microcrystals (MMCs), and 15 μm large-sized microcrystals (LMCs) were prepared and characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The in vitro release results showed that particle sizes had great effects on the sustained release of LH, where large-sized particles exhibited superior sustained release than the smaller ones. Besides, LP suspensions exhibited better sustained release than LH suspensions at the same size scale. Moreover, the pharmacokinetics showed that LP LMCs produced an extended in vivo intramuscularly injectable profile for up to 45 days, which was 10 days longer than that of the LH LMCs. Our findings demonstrated that particle size had appreciable impacts on drug sustained release and provided valuable knowledge for the rational design of optimized micronized suspensions for long-acting injectables.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are publicly available.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to scidraw website for assistance with the Graphical abstract.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Science and Technology Innovation Projects for Young and Middle-aged Talents of Shenyang (RC200406).

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Author notes

  1. Shuo Li and Ying He are Both contributed to this work equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wuya College of Innovation, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang, Liaoning, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Shuo Li, Ying He, Dianjun Sun, Zhaomeng Wang, Jiang Yu, Jianying Ye, Zhonggui He & Yongjun Wang

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  1. Shuo Li
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  3. Dianjun Sun
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  4. Zhaomeng Wang
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  7. Zhonggui He
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Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: Zhonggui He, Yongjun Wang, Shuo Li, Ying He; Performed the experiments: Shuo Li, Ying He, Dianjun Sun, Zhaomeng Wang, Jiang Yu, Jianying Ye; Analyzed the data: Shuo Li, Ying He, Zhonggui He, Yongjun Wang, Zhaomeng Wang, Jiang Yu; Wrote the data: Shuo Li, Ying He, Zhonggui He, Yongjun Wang, Zhaomeng Wang.

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Correspondence to Zhonggui He or Yongjun Wang.

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Li, S., He, Y., Sun, D. et al. Long Acting Ionically Paired Pamoate-based Suspension of Lurasidone: An exploration of Size Effects on in vitro Dissolution and in vivo Pharmacokinetic Behaviors. AAPS PharmSciTech 24, 83 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1208/s12249-023-02541-8

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