Micronization of vincristine extracted from Catharanthus roseus by expansion of supercritical fluid solution

In the pharmaceutical industry, improvements in the properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients are widely favored. One of the significant issues in this respect is the reduction in the particle size, which increases the bioavailability. In this study, the first step entailed an optimization of the supercritical fluid extraction of vincristine from Catharanthus roseus using ethanol as co-solvent for CO2. As the second step, the vincristine extracted from C. roieus was micronized by a powerful, permanent, and reproducible method, in accordance with the expansion of supercritical solution using CO2 as a solvent (SC-CO2). The liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and high resolution mass results demonstrated that the sample which was extracted contained vincristine. The investigation of the diameter of the particles was determined by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). FESEM results showed that the diameter of the particles collected were mainly within 5-200 nm.