FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF FLOATING TABLETS OF FAMCICLOVIR USING VARIOUS HYDROPHILIC AND HYDROPHOBIC POLYMERS

Oral drug administration has been the predominant route for drug delivery. During the past two decades, numerous oral delivery systems have been developed to act as drug reservoirs from which the active substance can be released over a defined period of time at a predetermined and controlled rate. The present study is to develop Floating tablets of Famcyclovir. In this present study an attempt was made to increase the GI residence time of Famcyclovir, as the drug is having less gastric residence time, by formulating in to Floating tablets. Systematic studies were conducted using different concentration of rate releasing polymer HPMC and Sodium carboxy methyl cellulosefor extending the drug release in upper GIT. All the prepared systems were evaluated for the different properties. Before the preparation of tablets, preformulation studies to find out the micromeritic properties to assess flowability, compressibility properties and solubility studies. And all the formulations gave good results for above preformulation studies. Formulated tablets gave satisfactory results for various physical tablet evaluation parameters like tablet dimensions, hardness, friability, weight variation, buoyancy, content uniformity, all the formulations were found within the permissible range .Amongall the formulations (F1-F9), it was observed that formulation-1 has shown better buoyancy and dissolution profile. So Formulation1 was found to be the best formulation among others. The kinetic treatment of the drug release data of the prepared formulations followed first order drug release; the prepared formulations followed HixonCrowel profile. It indicated that drug release was dissolution controlled and directly proportional to qube root of time. Hence F1was considered as formulation extending 99.85% of drug was released at the end of 20 hrs. The stability studies were carried out for period of 3 months as per ICH guidelines and were in acceptable limits. Keywords: Famcyclovir, hardness, friability, weight variation, buoyancy, content uniformity.