Mucoadhesive Polymers: Means of Improving the Mucoadhesive Properties of Drug Delivery System

The goal of any drug delivery system is to provide a therapeutic amount of drug to the proper site in the body to achieve promptly & then maintain the desired drug concentration. That is why the drug delivery system should deliver dr ug at a state dictated by the needs of the body over a specified period of treatment. This idealized objective points to the two aspects most important to drug delivery, namely, spatial placement relates to targeting a drug to a specific organ or tissue while temporal delivery refers to the control of rate of drug delivery to the target tissue. Bioadhesion can be defined as the process by which a natural or a synthetic polymer can adhere to a biological substrate. When the biological substrate is a mucosal layer then the phenomena is known as mucoadhesion. The substrate possessing bioadhesive property can help in devising a delivery system capable of delivering a bioactive agent for a prolonged period of time at a specific delivery site. The current review provides a good insight on mucoadhesive polymers, the phenomenon of mucoadhesion and the factors which have the ability to affect the mucoadhesive properties of a polymer.