Abstract: 
Frequent dosing is crucial for achieving therapeutic efficacy of many drugs. The approach of sustained release comes worthy here for attaining the desired therapeutic levels without the need of frequent dosing for the treatment of various disorders. Sustained delivery of the drug could reduce the dosing frequency, adverse effects such as gastrointestinal disorders and improve patient compliance. The present study aimed at formulating Celecoxib matrix tablets by direct compression and wet granulation techniques using banana peel powder as a release retardant. It is also hypothesized that the reported gastro-protective properties of banana peel powder aid a positive effect in reducing the gastro-intestinal side effects of Celecoxib in the formulation. The prepared peel powder was subjected to physicochemical and phytochemical analysis. The flow properties of granules and the uniformity of weight, crushing strength, friability, swelling index and drug content of compressed tablets were determined. In-vitro drug release studies of the matrix tablets were conducted and the release rate was found to decrease with increase in amount of peel powder. The kinetics of drug release was determined by fitting the release data to different kinetic models. Kinetic modeling of in-vitro dissolution profiles revealed the drug release mechanism ranges from Fickian transport to anomalous type and non-Fickian transport. The results suggested that wet granulation is a suitable method to formulate sustained release with banana peel powder and it can perform therapeutically better than conventional immediate release dosage form. In-vivo toxicity studies also revealed that the prepared formulations show no toxicity in zebra fish models.

Keywords: Banana Peel Powder, Matrix Tablet, Sustained Release, Musa Species, Release Retardant.