Drug delivery is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals.^[1][2] Drug delivery technologies are patent protected formulation technologies that modify drug release profile, absorption, distribution and elimination for the benefit of improving product efficacy and safety, as well as patient convenience and compliance.^[3] Most common methods of delivery include the preferred non-invasive peroral (through the mouth), topical (skin), transmucosal (nasal, buccal/sublingual, vaginal, ocular and rectal) and inhalation routes.^[4][5] Many medications such as peptide and protein, antibody, vaccine and gene based drugs, in general may not be delivered using these routes because they might be susceptible to enzymatic degradation or can not be absorbed into the systemic circulation efficiently due to molecular size and charge issues to be therapeutically effective. For this reason many protein and peptide drugs have to be delivered by injection. For example, many immunizations are based on the delivery of protein drugs and are often done by injection.

Current efforts in the area of drug delivery include the development of targeted delivery in which the drug is only active in the target area of the body (for example, in cancerous tissues) and sustained release formulations in which the drug is released over a period of time in a controlled manner from a formulation. Types of sustained release formulations include liposomes, drug loaded biodegradable microspheres and drug polymer conjugates.

[edit] Drug delivery companies

• Medincell S.A.
• OZ Biosciences
• aaiPharma
• Bend Research Inc.
• Abraxis Bioscience Inc.
• Access Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• ACG Worldwide
• Acrux Ltd.
• Antares Pharma Inc.
• Docoop Technologies Ltd.
• The Magnetic Capsule
• Medtronic Inc.
• Nanomi
• 3M Drug Delivery Systems
• BioCellChallenge SAS
• GP-Pharm S.A.

[edit] References

• M. N. V. Ravi Kumar (2008), Handbook of Particulate Drug Delivery (2-Volume Set), American Scientific Publishers. ISBN 1-58883-123-X

[edit] External links

• The 10th US-Japan Symposium on Drug Delivery Systems
• Article in Chemical and Engineering News
• Drug Delivery News and Analysis
• Drug Delivery Reports

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