Pharmaceutical Technologies for Enhancing Oral Bioavailability of Poorly Soluble Drugs

The oral bioavailability of BCS (biopharmaceutics classification system) class II drugs with poor solubility and reasonable permeability is limited by the drug dissolution step from drug products. Though prodrug approach is an exciting way of improving the oral bioavailability, it requires extensive studies to establish the safety profile of prodrugs in humans. In view of the increasing market share of oral drug products, a variety of technologies are developed to enhance the oral bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs using the excipients with approved or GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status. The present review describes the main technologies such as micronization, nanosizing, crystal engineering, solid dispersions, cyclodextrins, solid lipid nanoparticles and other colloidal drug delivery systems with a few relevant research reports. *Corresponding author: Yellela S.R. Krishnaiah, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, 3200, South University Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33328, USA, Tel: 954-262-1529 (O); Fax: 954-262-2278 Received January 29, 2010; Accepted March 30, 2010; Published March 30, 2010 Citation: Krishnaiah YSR (2010) Pharmaceutical Technologies for Enhancing Oral Bioavailability of Poorly Soluble Drugs. J Bioequiv Availab 2: 028036. doi:10.4172/jbb.1000027 Copyright: © 2010 Krishnaiah YSR. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.