Emerging Techniques and Challenges in Colon Drug Delivery Systems

Colon specific drug delivery has achieved utmost importance because the colon is an area that is vulnerable to a number of diseases including ulcerative colitis, crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and carcinomas. And, preservation of formulation in upper GIT to colon is still important step. Treatment of these diseases with a colon-specific drug delivery system provides an interesting alternative over systemic drug administration because of lower dosing and fewer systemic side effects. Different challenges are associated with this delivery system like long transit time, enzymatic interference, intersubject variation of microflora etc. A variety of under clinical and commercially available approaches were designed for remediation of colonic ailments. Different dosage forms like tablets, capsules, pellets, multiparticulates, microspheres, liposome, nanoparticulates etc. were used for colon targeting. The present review article mainly focused on different approaches, mainly on formulation, carrier system and/or coating system, bioactive stability, patient compliance and evaluation of colon specific drug delivery system.