Essentials of Pharmaceutical Product Development for Magnetically Modulated Drug Delivery Systems

There is a renewed focus on developing formulation strategies for the regional drug targeting. Magnetic drug targeting provides an innovative approach that may include two and three dimensional arrays of magnetic drug delivery systems. Applications of magnetic microsphere-based drug delivery include chemotherapy, arthritis, gene, and cell transplantation therapy. This article describes different formulation approaches, routes of administration, and mechanisms of magnetic-based drug targeting. Magnetic materials have to be synthesized before considering the formulation development. Although the preparation evaluation of magnetic drug delivery is comparable with conventional microspheres and nanoparticles, characterization of magnetic properties of the final formulation is very essential for success of this approach. In vivo evaluation studies include tumor targeting in animals, histological evaluation using MRI and course of the magnetic drug delivery system by image mapping using suitable biological markers.