Advances in buccoadhesive drug delivery system – A Review

Abstract

Transmucosal drug delivery is an alternative method of systemic drug delivery that offers several advantages over existing methods by enhancing the drug bioavailability due to rich in blood supply in mucosal surface and prolongs residence time at the site of application to permit once or twice daily dosing. It provides rapid drug transport to the systemic circulation and avoiding, in most cases, degradation by first-pass hepatic metabolism. Transmucosal is a relatively new drug delivery strategy; in this traditional polymers are replaced by novel bioadhesive polymers such as thiomers (e.g.chitosan) and lectins etc. to overcome limitations of traditional polymers. Some of the buc- coadhesive products like Nitrostat®, Buccastem®, Striant™, Suscard® are commercially available in the market to play vital role in the treatment of various diseases. The buccoadhesive products are increasing day by day in the market, so they have steady growth rate of above 10 % in the world market. It is the objective of this article to review buccal drug delivery by discussing the structure, permeability of buccal mucosa, mechanism of buccoadhe- sion, novel mucoadhesive polymers and recent buccoadhesive formulations and their commercially available dosage forms.