Research Insight: Trends in Drug Delivery

Abstract

Drug delivery is the process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve therapeutic effect in humans or animals. Most common routes for administering the drug include the preferred non-invasive peroral, topical,transmucosal and inhalation.In general many medications such as peptide and protein, antibody, vaccine and gene based drugs are not delivered by using these routes as  they might be susceptible to enzymatic degradation or can not be absorbed into the systemic circulation efficiently. Recent efforts in the area of drug delivery includes the development of targeted delivery in which the drug is only active in the target area of the body and sustained release formulations in which the drug is released over a period of time in a controlled manner. In order to achieve efficient targeted delivery, the designed system must avoid the host's defense mechanisms and circulate to its intended site of action.

The rate of infectious diseases in the world is skyrocketing, which is quite an alarming matter. Scientists are astounded by the fact that every year two new species of human viruses are being discovered. They have already forecasted that till the year 2020, we will come to know about the existence of 10-40 new human pathogens. This means that we are at the brink of a new global health crisis. This threat can be combated by the science of drug innovations.