Recent Patents on Drug Delivery & Formulation - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2011

Vaginal route serves as a potential site of drug administration for local and systemic absorption of a variety of therapeutic agents. Despite being a non- invasive route of drug administration, the vagina has not been extensively explored as compared to other routes. Intravaginal drug delivery has been traditionally restricted to delivery of antinfectives to the local vaginal cavity. Concerted efforts have been made in the recent p Read More

Microneedle mediated microporation has proved its potential to enhance the delivery of therapeutic drug molecules through skin over the last one decade. Several patents have been granted and cutting edge research is going on particularly for the delivery of biopharmaceuticals (macromolecules like protein or peptides). The technology involves use of micron sized needles made of diverse materials to form micro Read More

The parenteral route of administration is the most effective route for the delivery of the active pharmaceutical substances with narrow therapeutic index, poor bioavailability especially for those drugs, prescribed to unconscious patients. To maintain a therapeutic effective concentration of the drug, it requires frequent injections which ultimately lead to patient discomfort. In parenteral drug delivery, major progress has been do Read More

The eye due to its special attributes is an effortlessly accessible location for topical drug administration. Topical administration not only provides local targeting of drugs but also offers a better control over the systemic delivery. Bioavailability of drugs from ocular dosage forms is dependent to the precorneal loss factors (physiological and anatomical constraints of eye) thus, very small fraction of the drug is absorbed through oc Read More

Nanoemulsions have garnered considerable attention in research as well as in therapeutics due to their advantages like thermodynamic stability, optical clarity, ease of preparation, and unique property of behaving as supersolvent for solubilizing both hydrophobic and hydrophilic solutes. Due to above mentioned attributes, nanoemulsions find numerous applications in diagnosis as well as therapy of diseases. Hence, the aim of Read More

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by therapeutic areas/targets and therapeutic agents related to drug delivery and formulations.