Rakesh S. Shivatare
JJT University India
Title: Novel drug delivery systems : new lifeline for herbal drugs
Biography
Biography: Rakesh S. Shivatare
Abstract
Novel drug delivery systems (NDDS) are designed to achieve a continuous delivery of drugs at predictable and reproducible kinetics over an extended period of time in the circulation. The potential advantages of this concept include minimisation of drug related side effects due to controlled therapeutic blood levels instead of oscillating blood levels, improved patient compliance due to reduced frequency of dosing and the reduction of the total dose of drug administered.
In the past few decades, considerable attention has been focused on the development of novel drug delivery system for herbal drugs. The novel carriers should ideally fulfill two prerequisites. Firstly, it should deliver the drug at a rate directed by the needs of the body, over the period of treatment. Secondly, it should channel the active entity of herbal drug to the site of action. Conventional dosage forms including prolonged-release dosage forms are unable to meet none of these. In phyto-formulation research, developing nano dosage forms (polymeric nanoparticles and nanocapsules, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, phytosomes and nanoemulsion etc.) have a number of advantages for herbal drugs, including enhancement of solubility and bioavailability, protection from toxicity, enhancement of pharmacological activity, enhancement of stability, improving tissue macrophages distribution, sustained delivery, protection from physical and chemical degradation etc.
Thus the nano-sized novel drug delivery systems of herbal drugs have a potential future for enhancing the activity and overcoming problems associated with plant medicines.