A Screening of Permeation Enhancers for Transdermal Delivery of Propofol

Propofol is a highly lipophilic anesthetic drug used to induce sedation, predictable amnesia and anxiolysis. In this project, several permeation enhancers were screened to improve the permeation of propofol across the porcine full thickness skin. The screening studies of permeation enhancers was performed in two phases. As a result of the first phase of screening studies, DMSO, Laureth-4 and transcutol were found to be the potential penetration enhancers which improved the permeation of propofol across the skin ~ 4, 3.5 and 4.5-fold more compared to control. A 100% propofol was used as a control. In the second phase, the combination of DMSO and Laureth-L4 (F1) delivered 278.6 ± 20.3 µg/cm2 propofol across the skin which were found to be ~ 18 more compared to control (15.68 ± 2.6 µg/cm2 ). The studies in this project concluded that the combination of DMSO and Laureth-L4 can be used for the development of transdermal propofol product in the future.