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and Biopharmaceutics
Aniruddha Roy
Dosage form design:
Biopharmaceutical
consideration
For a drug to exert its biological effect, it must be
o Transported by the body fluids,
o Traverse the required membrane
biological barriers,
o Escape widespread distribution to unwanted areas,
o Endure metabolic attack,
o Penetrate in adequate concentration to the sites of
action,
o Interact in a specific fashion,
o Causing an alteration of cellular function.
General principles of drug absorption
Body membranes are generally classified as three
main types:
- those composed of several layers of cells, as the
skin,
- those composed of a single layer of cells, as the
intestinal epithelium,
- those of less than one cell in thickness, as the
membrane of a single cell.
1. By passive diffusion
2. By active transport
Passive diffusion
• Passive diffusion is used to describe the passage of
(drug) molecules through a membrane which behaves
inertly in that it does not actively participate in the
process.
• The absorption process is driven by the concentration
gradient existing across the membrane, with the
passage of drug molecules occurring from the side of
high drug concentration.
• A major source of variation is membrane permeability,
which depends on the lipophilicity of the drug molecule
(logP). The lipid solubility of a drug, therefore, is a
very important physicochemical property governing the
rate of transfer through a variety of biologic
membrane barriers.
Fick’s law: the rate of diffusion or transport across a
membrane (dc/dt) is proportional to the difference in
drug concentration on both sides of the membrane.
=dc/dt=P(C1-C2)
Where dc/dt = rate of diffusion,
C1 and C2 refer to the drug concentrations on each side of the
membrane
P is a permeability coefficient or constant.
-dc/dt=PC1
The gastrointestinal absorption of most drugs
from solution occurs in this manner in accordance with
first order kinetics in which the rate is dependent on
drug concentration.
3) Requires energy