title: Computer-Assisted Drug Formulation Design: Novel Approach in Drug Delivery.
abstract: We hypothesize that, by using several chemo/bio informatics tools and statistical computational methods, we can study and then predict the behavior of several drugs in model nanoparticulate lipid and polymeric systems. Accordingly, two different matrices comprising tripalmitin, a core component of solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), and PLGA were first modeled using molecular dynamics simulation, and then the interaction of drugs with these systems was studied by means of computing the free energy of binding using the molecular docking technique. These binding energies were hence correlated with the loadings of these drugs in the nanoparticles obtained experimentally from the available literature. The obtained relations were verified experimentally in our laboratory using curcumin as a model drug. Artificial neural networks were then used to establish the effect of the drugs' molecular descriptors on the binding energies and hence on the drug loading. The results showed that the used soft computing methods can provide an accurate method for in silico prediction of drug loading in tripalmitin-based and PLGA nanoparticulate systems. These results have the prospective of being applied to other nano drug-carrier systems, and this integrated statistical and chemo/bio informatics approach offers a new toolbox to the formulation science by proposing what we present as computer-assisted drug formulation design (CADFD).
authors.affiliation: †Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, and ‡Bioinformatics Program, Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11566, Egypt.
authors.forename: Abdelkader A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Metwally
authors.affiliation: †Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, and ‡Bioinformatics Program, Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11566, Egypt.
authors.forename: Rania M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Hathout
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000737:chemistry; D002626:Chemistry, Pharmaceutical / Q000379:methods*; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D003474:Curcumin / Q000737:chemistry*; D004337:Drug Carriers / Q000737:chemistry; D004339:Drug Compounding / Q000379:methods*; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D019344:Lactic Acid / Q000737:chemistry; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D010316:Particle Size; D011100:Polyglycolic Acid / Q000737:chemistry; D000077182:Polylactic Acid-Polyglycolic Acid Copolymer
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D004337:Drug Carriers; D008055:Lipids; D000077182:Polylactic Acid-Polyglycolic Acid Copolymer; D011100:Polyglycolic Acid; D019344:Lactic Acid; D003474:Curcumin
keywords: docking; formulation; informatics; molecular dynamics; nanoparticles; neural networks