Micro and nanoscale technologies in oral drug delivery

Abstract

Micro and nanocarriers Micro and nanoscale technologies Oral drug delivery Tissue models Oral administration is a pillar of the pharmaceutical industry and yet it remains challenging to administer hydrophilic therapeutics by the oral route. Smart and controlled oral drug delivery could bypass the physiological barriers that limit the oral delivery of these therapeutics. Micro-and nanoscale technologies, with an unprecedented ability to create, control, and measure micro-or nanoenvironments, have found tremendous applications in biology and medicine. In particular, significant advances have been made in using these technologies for oral drug delivery. In this review, we briefly describe biological barriers to oral drug delivery and micro and nanoscale fabrication technologies. Micro and nanoscale drug carriers fabricated using these technologies, including bioadhesives, microparticles, micropatches, and nanoparticles, are described. Other applications of micro and nanoscale technologies are discussed, including fabrication of devices and tissue engineering models to precisely control or assess oral drug delivery in vivo and in vitro, respectively. Strategies to advance translation of micro and nanotechnologies into clinical trials for oral drug delivery are mentioned. Finally, challenges and future prospects on further integration of micro and nanoscale technologies with oral drug delivery systems are highlighted.

Polyblend Nanofibers to Regenerate Gingival Tissue: A Preliminary In Vitro Study

“…The development of new technologies and devices may help in the regeneration of the oral soft tissues, thus allowing to obtain a physiologically stable masticatory apparatus and to reach an optimal aesthetic. An emerging and increasingly widespread innovation in dentistry is the use of nanotechnologies for oral tissue regeneration (Ahadian et al, 2020;Bonilla-Represa et al, 2020;Mohandesnezhad et al, 2020).…”

“…Several studies proposed the use of nanofibers to regenerate (Gunn et al, 2010;Chanda et al, 2018) or deliver substances and compounds (Amler et al, 2014;Ahadian et al, 2020) in different tissues (Wang et al, 2017;Beznoska et al, 2019); however, only few preliminary published articles are available in oral fields (Bonilla-Represa et al, 2020;Mohandesnezhad et al, 2020).…”

Nanoparticulate Drug Delivery Strategies to Address Intestinal Cytochrome P450 CYP3A4 Metabolism towards Personalized Medicine

“…The duodenum and proximal jejunum are the main absorptive sites of designed lipophilic drug formulations due to the different morphology and mucosal cell differentiation [ 130 ]. First, the thickness of adherent mucus layers of proximal GIT is the thinnest among other regions (e.g., stomach, ileum, colon); in humans, the small intestine mucus layer has a uniform thickness of 15.5 µm compared to 135 µm in the colon [ 131 , 132 ]. Also, pH is substantially increased from the extremely acidic stomach (~0.8–5) to less acidic duodenum (~7) [ 132 ].…”

Piceatannol-Loaded Bilosome-Stabilized Zein Protein Exhibits Enhanced Cytostatic and Apoptotic Activities in Lung Cancer Cells

“…Researchers are introducing certain techniques to deal with impediments associated with the difficulties of supplying individual target tissues with the needed therapeutic moieties. Vesicular carriers are one form of nano-colloidal system that has gained a large amount of attention for distributing poorly soluble drugs and proteins/peptides [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. There are various structures in vesicular carriers, including unilamellar or multilamellar spherical structures, often consisting of lipid molecules organized into orientation bilayers and capable of encapsulating drug molecules [ 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”