Injectable PLGA/hydrocortisone formulation produced by continuous supercritical emulsion extraction.

The objective of the present study was to develop an anti-inflammatory prolonged action formulation for local injection in prefilled syringes. Hydrocortisone acetate (HA) was selected as a model corticosteroid drug to be incorporated in poly(lactic-co-glycolic) (PLGA) microspheres. The formulation was obtained by supercritical emulsion extraction in continuous operation layout (SEE-C) to test the process robustness for a continuous industrial production. PLGA/HA microspheres with mean sizes between 1 μm (SD±0.20) and 5 μm (SD±1.45) were obtained when operating at 80 bar and 38 °C with a L/G ratio of 0.1 in the counter-current tower. The produced microdevices showed excellent encapsulation efficiencies between 75% and 80%, depending on the emulsion formulations tested, and different sustained release in the range of 6-15 days. In dependence of the different emulsion (single or double) processed by SEE-C, different products can be obtained according to the therapeutic requests. SEE-C confirms to be an innovative and flexible technology for biopolymer microdevices production, coupling the efficiency of continuous operation to the easy process scalability.