Advances in Pharmaceutical Strategies Enhancing the Efficiencies of Oral Colon-Targeted Delivery Systems in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a common disease characterized by chronic inflammation in gastrointestinal tracts, which is primarily treated by administering anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive drugs that inhibit the burden of intestinal inflammation and improve disease-related symptoms. However, the established therapeutic strategy has limited therapeutic efficacy and adverse drug reactions. Therefore, new disease-targeting drug-delivery strategies to develop more effective treatments are urgent. This review provides an overview of the drug-targeting strategies that can be used to treat IBD, and our recent attempts on the colon-specific delivery system (Pae-SME-CSC) with a paeonol-loaded self-microemulsion (Pae-SMEDDS) are introduced.

Strategic Approaches for Colon Targeted Drug Delivery: An Overview of Recent Advancements

“…Liposomes are an efficient drug delivery system composed of double-layered phospholipids [10,30,31]. Liposomes are biodegradable, biocompatible, and amenable to the incorporation of both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs [32,33].…”

“…Solid lipid nanoparticles are also a superior system in terms of drug protection, entrapment efficiency, and increasing the amount of drug released at specific sites [10,35,36]. The lipid matrix of solid lipid nanoparticles degrades at a slow rate and allows for extended drug release [10].…”

“…Furthermore, the microenvironment surrounding a disease site in the colon is markedly different from normal and healthy regions. Patients with colonic diseases produce high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and inflammatory cytokines, have an imbalance of important antioxidants, and suffer from mucosal injury [10]. Given that the pathophysiological changes in the microenvironment surrounding disease sites should be considered during formulation development, various formulation approaches have been explored to optimize the colonic drug delivery, including pH-sensitive systems, enzyme-triggered systems, and magnetically-driven systems.…”

Targeting the Pregnane X Receptor Using Microbial Metabolite Mimicry

“…The use of mouse models beyond DSS induced colitis (e.g., IL10 -/-) could broaden the translatability of these compounds during preclinical drug development. Future strategies to improve solubility and targeted delivery could include formulations used in existing compounds for colon targeted delivery 44 . Despite these caveats, our studies provide and validate the initial proof-of-concept of the utility of microbial metabolite mimicry as a potential drug discovery modality.…”

Coumarins into Polyurethanes for Smart and Functional Materials

“…Coumarin 6 (C6) is frequently used as a fluorescent hydrophobic drug model to trace drug delivery systems via fluorescence spectroscopy [98]. Besides, efficient colon-specific drug delivery systems as effective mechanisms to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are a challenging objective that is gaining increased importance [99][100][101]. Therefore, Naeem et al [97] combined a commercial pH-sensitive methacrylate polymer (Eudragit S100) with an enzyme degradable azo-polyurethane to fabricate coumarin-loaded nanoparticles.…”