Importance and Characterization of Microencapsulation Techniques in Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms - a Review

Microencapsulated dosage forms represent effective new therapeutic platforms. This special issue will cover the different interests of microencapsulation as a means to control or modify the release of drug substances from drug delivery systems. To overcome the drug stability problem, since clinical efficacies have been reported to be improved by the encapsulation of pharmaceuticals, the bioavailability of drugs, control drug release kinetics, minimizing drug side effects, and taste masking of the drug substances. Microencapsulation is process of enclosing micro sized particles in a polymeric shell. There are different techniques available for the encapsulation of drug entities. Most of the applied techniques of micro-encapsulation are based on modifications of the four basic methods: spray-drying, phase separation (coacervation), gelation and solvent extraction/evaporation. The encapsulation efficiency of the microparticle or microsphere or microcapsule depends upon different factors like concentration of the polymer, solubility of polymer in solvent, rate of solvent removal, solubility of organic solvent in water etc. The present review article provides a different microencapsulation techniques and different factors influencing the encapsulation efficiency of the microencapsulation techniques based on research studies reported.