The objective of the research work was to design and characterize Nanostructured Lipid Carriers (NLC) incorporated with anticancer agent docetaxel. NLC were prepared by hot homogenization followed by ultrasonication method using stearic acid as the solid lipid and oleic acid as the liquid lipid. Soya bean lecithin was used as surfactant and poloxamer 188 as the cosurfactant. Optimization of the formulations was done based on sedimentation volume, particle size, polydispersity, % entrapment

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... iency and zeta potential. The optimized batch of NG9 exhibited a particle size of 180µm, polydispersity of 0.25, %EE of 78% and zeta potential of 41mV. Based on this it was decided that concentration of lipid at 20%, solid lipid: liquid lipid ratio of 80:20, surfactant and cosurfactant at 4%, mannitol at 3% was the optimal proportion. The process parameters was further optimized and the results revealed that at homogenization RPM of 6000, homogenization time of 20min and sonication time of 10min resulted in NLC with ideal characteristics. The in vitro release of Docetaxel from the optimized batch, NG9 was found to be almost complete with a release of 98.80 ±0.08 at 4 hours. The drug release of this batch when subjected to pharmacokinetics studies using various models showed that the data best into zero order and Higuchi release kinetic model with a coefficient of determination (R 2) value of 0.9972 and 0.9347. Linearity to Higuchi kinetic model indicated a diffusion controlled drug release. The release component (n) from peppas model was found to be 0.42, which indicated Fickian diffusion from which it can be assumed that the drug delivery system under study is a matrix device.