Pedram Nemati - Novel Drug Delivery Systems Dept., Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute, Tehran, Iran.
Mohammad Imani - Novel Drug Delivery Systems Dept., Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute, Tehran, Iran.
Mohammad Hosein Khalifeh - School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

This paper deals with application of mathematical modeling in description of initial burst drug release from simple monolithic dispersion devices. Although the significance of burst release in controlled drug delivery has not been entirely ignored, no successful theories have been put forth to fully describe this phenomenon. Here, artificial neural networks is used to simulate the porous silicone-based drug delivery devices as monolithic dispersion of betamethasone in a silicone matrix using two leachable porogens to predict the optimized formulation parameters including the initial drug loading percentage (%w/w) and porogen content using drug release profiles. The network was also successfully examined in determination of the burst release profile for a given formulation parameters.

Porous Monolithic Devices; Modeling; Burst Release; Corticosteroids; Artificial Neural Network