Bioavailability enhancement of poorly soluble drugs: The holy grail in pharma industry

Bioavailability, one of the prime pharmacokinetic properties of a drug, is defined as the fraction of an administered dose of unchanged drug that reaches the systemic circulation and is used to describe the systemic availability of a drug. Bioavailability assessment is imperative in order to demonstrate whether the drug attains the desirable systemic exposure for an effective therapy. Bioavailability has become a subject of importance in drug discovery and development studies in recent years.

METHODS: A systematic literature review in the field of bioavailability and the approaches used to improve it was done extensively with focus on more recent papers. The collected data was thoroughly studied and summarized. PubMed and Science Direct and general Google searches were used for data mining.

RESULTS: The main prospective of this review was to summarize different approaches and their pharmaceutical application for poorly water-soluble drug, to the effective improvements of stability, physicochemical and mechanical properties which directly or indirectly improved bioavailability.

CONCLUSION: The use of novel methods such as nano-based formulations, bio-enhancers, solid dispersion, lipid-and polymer-based formulations provide a wide range of applications in not only improving the solubility and permeability of the poorly bioavailable drugs but also improve the stability, and targeting of the drug to specific tissues and has changed the pharmaceutical industry drastically. However, new potential methods in the field of pharmaceutical science are being the part of research to formulate various dosage forms with adequate systemic availability and improved patient compliance. Read more on bioavailability enhancement