INTRANASAL THERMOREVERSIBLE MUCOADHESIVE GELS: A Review

Almost 40% of active Pharmaceutical ingredients have low oral bioavailability, high hepatic first-pass metabolism and also less efficient in crossing the blood brain barrier for brain targeting through oral delivery. To overcome this problem the various system such as: nasal spray, gels, emulsions, droplets, suspensions, powders and thermoreversible mucoadhesive gels etc have been studied for nasal delivery. Thermoreversible mucoadhesive gels have promising results in nasal drug delivery. Thermoreversible mucoadhesive gels are those which convert into gel in nasal cavity after administration at body temperature with suitable gel strength, results in enhancement of the residence time in the nasal cavity. These formulations contain thermoreversible polymers (Pluronic F127 or Poloxamer) and mucoadhesive polymers. Thermoreversible polymers are a novel state of matter having both solid and liquid like properties which can be delivered as a fluid and solidifies within the body’s microenvironment where the temperature is higher than the sol-gel transition temperature. The formulation has the advantage to prevent the anterior leakage of dosage form, reduce the taste impact, and enhance the nasal bioavailability. Thermoreversible gels are formulated by two methods: simple stirriring and cold method. This abstract gives an overview of Thermoreversible mucoadhesive gels as a promising approach to effectively tackle the problem of low oral bioavailability of drugs.