A SMART ORO-SOFT PALATE MUCOSAL DRUG DELIVERY: CREDENTIALS AND FUTURE TRENDS

Abstract

Over the last few decades pharmaceutical scientists throughout the world are trying to explore transdermal and transmucosal routes as an alternative to injections. The main impediment for the oral delivery of the drugs as potential therapeutic agents is their extensive pre-systemic metabolism, instability in acidic environment associated with inadequate and erratic oral absorption. The parenteral route is the only established route that overcomes all the drawbacks related with the orally inefficient drugs. However the parenteral formulations are expensive, need frequent administration, with less patient compliance and other harmful effects. Since ancient times oral transmucosal drug delivery has received intensive interest for the systemic delivery of drugs proved to have better systemic bioavailability achieved by oromucosal route. Oral mucosal drug delivery provides an alternative method of systemic drug delivery which offers many advantages for both parenterals and oral methods. The oral mucosa is highly vascularised, hence drugs which are absorbed through the oral mucosa directly enter into the systemic circulation, bypassing the enzymes present in the gastrointestinal tract and first-pass metabolism in the liver. The various transmucosal sites available are sublingual and buccal, but also the soft-palatal mucosa was found to be the most convenient and easily accessible novel site for the delivery of therapeutic agents for systemic delivery as retentive dosage forms. It has adequate blood supply, rapid cellular recovery time after exposure to stress, flexible, smooth surface, devoid of mechanical irritation, local discomfort and non-invasive route. Recently soft palate route explore more attention towards the scientist as an alternative to buccal route for administering drugs using mucoadhesive drug delivery dosage forms. This review focuses the more recent advances in novel soft palate route and formulation strategies to design dosage forms to administer drug through this novel soft palate route.