A Comparative Study of Selected Drug Delivery Systems: Key Emphasis on Cocrystallization

The low solubility of an active pharmaceutical ingredient particularly biopharmaceutics classification system (BCS) Class II drugs leads to a lower dissolution profile, which in result causes a reduction in the overall bioavailability of drugs. Numerous approaches like nanotechnology, solid dispersion technique, micronization techniques, etc were aimed by scientists in the past to resolve this issue, but still not enough to get the desired outcomes. Key focus of this review is the study of the advantages and disadvantages of cocrystallization, nanotechnology and solid dispersions drug delivery techniques and the benefits of using cocrystallization techniques over the above-mentioned techniques. Various parameters including pharmaceutical, pharmacological and toxicological effects related to these mentioned drug delivery systems have been compared. Their advantages and disadvantages have been elaborated. For drug delivery purpose, the cocrystallization process has numerous advantages over nanotechnology and solid dispersions drug delivery techniques discussed in the text. Cocrystallization is a newer technique that can modify the physicochemical and pharmaceutical properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) with low solubility, low stability or sensitivity toward environmental hazards like temperature, moisture or photostability issues. During cocrystallization, the drug and the coformer interact with each other non-covalently in a fixed stoichiometric ratio. The availability of a large number of coformers makes this technique to be favorable for the researchers in designing cocrystals of newer and older API’s. Although solid dispersions and nanotechnology techniques are being utilized to a larger extent, still there are some drawbacks of these techniques like stability, toxicological factors and protection from environmental factors that need to be considered, while the cocrystallization process drastically modifies the various pharmaceutical parameters without altering the pharmacological properties of API’s. Here in this review, we performed a comparative analysis between nanotechnology, solid dispersion and cocrystallization techniques along with the importance of cocrystallization in the modification of drug profile and various applications in the pharmaceutical and allied industry.