Oral colon-specific therapeutic approaches toward treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract

Introduction: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing idiopathic disease. In clinical terms, most patients require lifelong medication associated with possible unpleasant adverse effects. Oral colon-specific drug delivery systems are designed to deliver therapeutic drugs to the inflamed colon to target pathophysiological manifestations of IBD. The aim is to maintain the drug with proper concentration in the inflamed colon, to enhance drug residence time and to minimize drug absorption by healthy tissues.

Areas covered: This review addresses the main barriers for colon-specific drug delivery from organism, tissue and cell levels, respectively. It also summarizes novel colon-specific therapeutic strategies using microparticles and nanoparticles.

Expert opinion: Oral colon-specific drug delivery represents a possible approach toward efficient treatment of IBD. As the environment of the gastrointestinal tract is harsh and intricate, this approach requires that drug carriers can respond to specific environmental factors of the inflamed colon, permitting stimulus-responsive release of loaded drugs to specific cells or even into specific organelles within cells.

Keywords::

• colonic drug delivery
• inflammatory bowel disease
• oral administration
• treatment

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney by the grant RO1-DK-071594 (to D.M).

Notes

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