Drug delivery

The term "drug delivery" refers to the methods, formulations, manufacturing procedures, storage systems, and technologies that are used in the process of conveying a pharmaceutical chemical to its intended target location to accomplish a certain therapeutic effect. To increase patient comfort and compliance, as well as the medicine's effectiveness and safety, several principles relating to drug formulation, routes of administration, site-specific targeting, metabolism, and toxicity are used. Modifying a medication's pharmacokinetics and specificity may be accomplished via the process of drug delivery by combining it with a variety of excipients, drug carriers, and medical devices. To get better therapeutic results, more attention is being placed on enhancing a drug's bioavailability as well as the duration of its effect. Some study has also been done to improve the safety of the person who is responsible for providing the drug. To reduce the likelihood of needlestick injuries, many kinds of microneedle patches have been created for the administration of vaccinations and other drugs, for instance.

The idea of "drug delivery" is deeply intertwined with "dosage form" and "route of administration," the latter of which is sometimes included in the definition of "drug delivery." The terms "means of administration" and "delivery of the medication" are sometimes used interchangeably; nonetheless, these are two very different ideas. The term "route of administration" refers to the path that a drug takes to enter the body, whereas the term "drug delivery" also encompasses the engineering of delivery systems and can include a variety of dose forms and devices that are utilized to deliver a drug via the same route. Oral, parenteral (injection), sublingual, topical, transdermal, inhaled, rectal, and vaginal administration are some of the more common methods of administration; however, drug delivery is not restricted to these routes, and there may be multiple ways to give pharmaceuticals via each route.

In contrast to the decrease in the creation of new drugs that have been occurring since the approval of the first controlled-release formulation in the 1950s, research into novel delivery methods has been making progress since that time. This change in attention may be attributable to several different circumstances. The high cost of creating new medications is one of the primary drivers driving this market. A study that was conducted in 2013 indicated that the cost of establishing a new delivery method was just 10% of the total cost of manufacturing a new medicine. More recent research estimated that the median cost of bringing a new medicine to market in the year 2020 would be $985 million; however, this study did not look at the cost of creating drug delivery systems. Other factors that may have contributed to the rise in the development of new drug delivery systems include the rising incidence of both chronic and infectious diseases, as well as an overall improvement in one's understanding of the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of a lot of different medications.