Overview of Oral Mucosal Delivery

Abstract

The oral cavity is an attractive site for the delivery of drugs either locally or directly into the systemic circulation. Its attractiveness resides in the fact that the mucosal membranes, upon which drug delivery systems are located, are readily accessible to patients or their carers. This means that the delivery technology can be precisely placed on the specific oral cavity membrane that is chosen as the site of absorption. It also means that the delivery system can be removed in order to terminate delivery if signs of adverse reactions are observed during treatment. The oral cavity represents a challenging area to develop an effective drug delivery technology. This arises due to the various inherent functions of the oral cavity (eating, swallowing, speaking, chewing), as well as the presence of the fluid that is involved in all these activities, saliva. This fluid is continually secreted into, and then removed from, the mouth. There are many advantages and disadvantages associated with the oral cavity as a site for drug delivery. Overall, however, it remains a viable option as a route for drug administration and has been extensively studied for that purpose [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].In this chapter, the rationale behind companies pursuing the goal of developing oral mucosal drug delivery systems as well as the key considerations in the design and development of a drug delivery system intended for use in the oral cavity will be discussed. Finally, this chapter will briefly describe some of the formulation aspects of delivery systems that have been successfully developed to deliver drugs via this route.

Evaluation of physical stability and drug content of zoledronate bisphosphonate gel

“…Therefore, this value was close to that of the oral mucosal pH and hence acceptable. The decrease in the pH value was similar to that in other studies and could have been caused by hydrolysis, oxidation, light, microorganisms, and chemical reaction between CO 2 and the water phase in the gel during storage [26].…”

Fluorescence lifetime imaging and reflectance confocal microscopy for multiscale imaging of oral precancer

“…Normal human oral mucosa, with an epithelial thickness ranging from 190 to 580 μm depending on the site in the oral cavity and cell nuclear diameters on the order of 10 μm, has similar tissue architecture and cell morphology to pig oral mucosa. 39 In comparison, the hamster tissue had a wide range of pathologies, resulting in spatial features in both the intensity and lifetime images. Additionally, the spectral and lifetime data Table 1 Normalized fluorescence intensities (a.u.)…”

A review of non-invasive insulin delivery systems for diabetes therapy in clinical trials over the past decade

“…Though theoretically envisioned well for the purpose, in practice, the device was large and bulky, hence, difficult for patients to carry around and could not be used with discretion. Other factors that contributed to the failure of Exubera include; the unimpressive Figure 3: Summary of advantages and disadvantages of the main five non-invasive delivery routes (buccal, oral, nasal, pulmonary and transdermal) for insulin delivery based on information from several reviews [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48].…”