Development of a supercritical fluid chromatographic system to predict the skin permeability of pharmaceutical compounds.

Oral administration of drugs can entail certain disadvantages, such as a pronounced first-pass effect or adverse side effects. To avoid these problems, transdermal administration may be a good alternative. Therefore, there is an increased attentiveness in the industry for skin permeability tests, but also for dermal exposure tests and risk assessment processes. Different chromatographic systems have already been used to generate models to predict the skin permeability, such as immobilized artificial membrane (IAM) chromatography and micellar liquid chromatography (MLC).
The aim of this project is to search for a faster and equally predictive chromatographic method as a potential alternative for the methods that are currently used to predict skin permeability of aspirant pharmaceutical or cosmetic compounds. Firstly, SFC will be considered as an alternative for the HPLC-based methods. Beside classical stationary phases, columns with given components of the skin, such as keratin, immobilized onto a chromatographic carrier will be examined as alternative stationary phases, occasionally also coupled to other phases. Furthermore, faster alternatives for the existing LC methods, such as MLC on fused-core columns will be considered. With the retention data, a quantitative retention-activity relationship (QRAR model) will also be developed to predict the skin permeability.