Current Trends for Ophthalmic Drug Delivery: a Review

Controlled and sustained delivery of ophthalmic drugs continues to remain a major focus area in the field of pharmaceutical drug delivery with the emergence of new, more potent drugs and biological response modifiers that may also have very short biological half-lives. The present review was conducted on drug delivery to the ocular route. Polymers with suitable rheological properties can facilitate the absorption of poorly absorbed drugs by increasing the contact time of the drug. Ocular drug delivery has been a major challenge for scientists due to its unique anatomy and physiology which contains various types of barriers such as different layers of cornea, sclera and retina including blood aqueous and blood–retinal barriers, choroidal and conjunctival blood flow etc. These barriers cause a significant challenge for delivery of a drug alone or in a dosage form, especially to the posterior segment of the eye. In this review we emphasized on the anatomy, physiology of eye along with the various formulation approaches reported in the literature and recent research conducted on these formulations and their efficacy.