Posted by admin on Aug 15, 2010 in |
Oral Disintegrating Drug Delivery Systems (ODDDS) have the unique property of rapidly disintegrating and/or dissolving and releasing the drug as soon as they come in contact with saliva, thus obviating the requirement of water during administration. Methods to improve patient’s compliance have always attracted scientists towards the development of fancy oral drug delivery systems. Among them, oral disintegrating drug delivery systems (ODDDS) have acquired an important position in the market by overcoming previously encountered administration problems and contributing to extension of patient life, which includes dysphagic, bed ridden, psychic, geriatric and pediatric patients. This review describes the various technologies developed for ODTs, different patented technologies and their products, disintegrated employed and their mechanism of action, taste masking methods and evaluation...
Read More
Posted by admin on Aug 15, 2010 in |
The solubility behavior of drugs remains one of the most challenging aspects in the formulation development. Although there was a great interest in solid dispersion systems during the past four decades to increase solubility by improving dissolution rate and bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs; there commercial use has been very limited, primarily because of manufacturing difficulties and various stability problems. It can be carried out by reducing drug particle size to the absolute minimum, and hence improving drug wet-ability, bioavailability may be significantly improved. Solid dispersion of drugs was generally produced by melt or solvent evaporation methods. Recently, surfactants have been included to stabilize the formulations, thus avoiding drug recrystallization and potentiating their solubility. New manufacturing processes to obtain solid dispersions have also been developed to reduce the drawbacks of the initial process. In this review, it is intended to discuss the eminent approach to improve the solubility or the dissolution rate and recent revival has been...
Read More
Posted by admin on Aug 15, 2010 in |
Pharmacogenomics is the branch of pharmacology and genomics that deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating molecular expressions and single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug’s efficacy or toxicity. Pharmacogenomics aims to develop rational means to optimize drug therapy, with respect to the patients’ genotype, to ensure maximum efficacy with minimal adverse effects. Such approaches promise the advent of “personalized medicine”; in which drugs and drug combinations are optimized for each individual’s unique genetic makeup. Pharmacogenomics is the whole genome application of pharmacokinetics, which examines the single gene interactions with drugs. Pharmacogenomics has a high potential to revolutionize cancer therapy. Some of the examples of genetic variations in drug metabolizing enzymes and drug targets described appear to play major roles in influencing drug efficacy or toxicity. In addition to the single gene variations described above, identification of genetic profiles to subtype the breast cancer and to identify the prognosis by microarray analysis has shown great promise towards individualized cancer therapy. Pharmacogenomics is the study of how an...
Read More
Posted by admin on Aug 15, 2010 in |
Direct genetic alterations leading to deregulated PI3K/Akt signaling are common in a significant fraction of human malignancies. Both Akt and Aurora A kinase have been shown to be important targets for intervention for cancer therapy. Nuclear Akt1 expression and Akt activation are common in cancer invasion. However, the mechanisms for this association and its causal role in invasion are uncertain. It is a key downstream effector of phosphoinositide 3’-kinase (PI3K) and directly modulates a wide range of pro-apoptotic and metabolism regulating proteins. Inhibition of Akt is a significant therapeutic goal due to the prevalence of activating mutations in the PI3K/Akt...
Read More
Posted by admin on Aug 1, 2010 in |
The community pharmacist, being an important member of the healthcare team and society, can make successful efforts to counsel the sufferer and guide him about this disease. Pharmacist is now becoming more patient oriented than product oriented and have brought many changes in life of patients. Hypertension or high blood pressure is a condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is chronically elevated. With every heart beat, the heart pumps blood through the arteries to the rest of the body. Blood pressure is the force of blood that is pushing up against the walls of the blood vessels. If the pressure is too high, the heart has to work harder to pump, and this could lead to organ damage and several illnesses such as heart attack, stroke, failure, aneurysm, or renal failure. Cardiovascular diseases caused 2.3 million deaths in India in the year 1990; this is projected to double by the year 2020. Hypertension is directly responsible for 57% of all stroke deaths and 24% of all...
Read More
