pharmaceutics Article Formulation of Sodium Valproate Nanospanlastics as a Promising Approach for Drug Repurposing in the Treatment of Androgenic Alopecia Farid. A. Badria 1,* , Hassan A. Fayed 2, Amira K. Ibraheem 3, Ahmed F. State 2 and Eman A. Mazyed 4 1 Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mansoura University, Mansoura 33516, Egypt 2 Department of Dermatology, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura 33516, Egypt;
[email protected] (H.A.F.);
[email protected] (A.F.S.) 3 Mansoura Dermatology and Leprosy Hospital, Mansoura 35511, Egypt;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +20-100-1762927 Received: 12 August 2020; Accepted: 9 September 2020; Published: 11 September 2020 Abstract: Sodium valproate (SV) is an antiepileptic drug that is widely used in the treatment of different seizure disorders. The topical SV has a hair regenerative potential through activating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and anagen phase induction. The aim of the current investigation was to fabricate nanospanlastics of SV for improving its dermal delivery by providing prolonged drug effect and increasing its permeability for treatment of androgenic alopecia (AGA). SV-loaded nanospanlastics were formulated according to 23 factorial design by ethanol injection method using a non-ionic surfactant (Span 60) and edge activators (EAs), such as Tween 80 and Cremophor RH 40, to explore the influence of different independent variables on entrapment efficiency (EE%) and percentage drug released after 12 h (Q12h) in order to choose the optimized formula using Design-Expert software.