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Review Article

pH-Responsive carriers for oral drug delivery: challenges and opportunities of current platforms

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Pages 569-581 | Received 22 Nov 2016, Accepted 03 Jan 2017, Published online: 14 Feb 2017
 

Abstract

Oral administration is a desirable alternative of parenteral administration due to the convenience and increased compliance to patients, especially for chronic diseases that require frequent administration. The oral drug delivery is a dynamic research field despite the numerous challenges limiting their effective delivery, such as enzyme degradation, hydrolysis and low permeability of intestinal epithelium in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. pH-Responsive carriers offer excellent potential as oral therapeutic systems due to enhancing the stability of drug delivery in stomach and achieving controlled release in intestines. This review provides a wide perspective on current status of pH-responsive oral drug delivery systems prepared mainly with organic polymers or inorganic materials, including the strategies used to overcome GI barriers, the challenges in their development and future prospects, with focus on technology trends to improve the bioavailability of orally delivered drugs, the mechanisms of drug release from pH-responsive oral formulations, and their application for drug delivery, such as protein and peptide therapeutics, vaccination, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and bacterial infections.

Acknowledgments

This article was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81503256, No.81400958), Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LQ15H280004, LY17H310002) and Science Foundation of Zhejiang Traditional Chinese Medicine (2015ZA046).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.