Measuring solubility of a chemotherapy-anti cancer drug (busulfan) in supercritical carbon dioxide

Abstract In the current study, the solubility of busulfan which is a chemotherapy drug for treating chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is measured in supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) at pressures between 120 and 400 bar, and temperatures between 308 and 338 K. It was indicated that the solubility of this drug via a static solubility measurement technique coupled with a gravimetric approach was between 3.27 × 10−5 to 8.65 × 10−4 (mole fraction). The measured solubility data reveled the direct effect of pressure on the solubility data, while the temperature has a dual effect of both increasing and decreasing effect considering the shifting point known as cross-over pressure which was measured to be around 160 bar for busulfan. Moreover, a theoretical approach was implemented to predict the solubility data using thermodynamic models. Indeed, five widely used semi-empirical density based correlations namely Kumar-Johnston (KJ), Bartle et al., Mendez-Santiago and Teja (MST), Garlapati and Madras and Chrastil models were used to model solubility data using only pressure, temperature and density of mixture as input parameters. The modeling as well as curve fitting results demonstrated that among the examined models, KJ model introduced more accurate correlative capability with AARD of about 7.57%.