Paper Title
Formulation Development of a Non-Ionic Surfactant Vesicles of Gemcitabine For Pulmonary Delivery

Abstract
Lung cancer is a major cause of death in the world. Cancer chemotherapy is limited by adverse toxicities to normal tissues. Targeted delivery of anticancer drugs to lung cancer by inhalation would help to reduce these toxicities. Lipid based delivery systems have been shown to be effective in improving the delivery of a number of drugs and the potential of using non-ionic surfactant vesicles (NIV) to improve the delivery of Gemcitabine (Gem) was studied in this research.The NIV was used to encapsulate Gem (Gem-NIV) for delivery by the pulmonary route. The NIV was prepared using concentrations of lipid (30 and 60 mM) and characterized on the basis of size, drug entrapment efficiency and zeta potential. In vivo pulmonary delivery of Gem-NIV was evaluated using two rodent models (BALB/c mice and Sprague-Dawley rats). The drug delivery study showed that inhalation of Gem treatments (both Gem and Gem-NIV) to mice resulted in high lung concentrations of Gem. The Gem lung level was higher for Gem-NIV (60 mM) treated mice at dose 14 mg/ml (0.5ml) compared with the same dose of Gem solution. In the rats, there was a greater accumulation of the Gem in the lungs of rats in comparison with other organs when administered as a NIV formulation prepared with 60 mM lipid at a dose of Gem of 6 mg/kg in comparison with NIV prepared with 30 mM. The results of these studies indicate that Gem-NIV show significant potential to improve delivery of Gem for the treatment of lung cancer using pulmonary administration compared with Gem solution alone. Keywords� Pulmonary, Gemcitabine and non-ionic surfactant vesicles.