Modified Excipients in Novel Drug Delivery: Need of the Day

Drug products not only contain “actives” that confer the intended therapeutic benefits such as pain relief or act on particular part of the body, but contain other materials that are also “functional” with respect to the drug product. These are known as excipients and specific functionality which they confer to a particular product is independent upon the process used to add the excipient to the formulation and its exact location within the final dosage form. Introduction of novel drug delivery systems and new drug moieties lead to the need for new excipients with varied characteristics. Development of new excipient entities and their evaluation is a costly procedure; modification of existing excipients is very easy, more economical and less time consuming. The development of excipients that are capable of fulfilling multifunctional roles such as enhancing drug bioavailability and drug stability as well as controlling the release of the drug according to the therapeutic needs is one of the most important prerequisites for further progress in the design of novel drug delivery systems. The main focus of this article is on synthetic novel excipients that perform multiple functions in pharmaceutical formulations.