SELF-EMULSIFYING DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS AS AN APPROACH TO IMPROVE THERAPEUTIC EFFECTIVENESS OF ORALLY ADMINISTRATED DRUGS

Abstract

There is no doubt that the improvement of oral bioavailability is a challenge for a significant number of the novel active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Many of the novel APIs fall into class II, III or IV of Biopharmaceutical Classification System (BCS). There are different approaches to improve oral bioavailability. One that is gaining much popularity is including such molecules into lipid-based drug delivery systems (LBDDS) that leads to an improved dissolution and mucosal permeability profiles and greater oral bioavailability. The LBDDS are promising vehicles for many APIs and can be classified as lipid solutions, lipid suspensions, emulsions, and self-emulsifying systems. Among the entire LBDDS, self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS) are gaining much popularity. We can find coarse emulsions (SEDDS), microemulsions (SMEDDS), and nanoemulsions (SNEDDS). They are defined as isotropic mixtures of one or more lipids, hydrophilic solvents, and emulsifier/co-emulsifier that form fine emulsions oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) by a slight agitation such as gastrointestinal (GI) peristaltic and dilution in the hydrophilic fluids. The article presents a detailed overview of the SEDDS’ formulation and outlines the advantages of these over conventional dosage forms on the improvement of oral bioavailability.

Keywords

• activity of ciliated epithelium
• bioenergetics processes