Peroral Delivery Of Peptide Through Superporous Hydrogel : A Review

Peptide and protein drugs have found an important position in therapeutics.Many protein- and DNA-based drugs exhibit high sensitivity to the surrounding physiological conditions as a result of their delicate physicochemical characteristics and the susceptibility to degradation by proteolytic enzymes in biological fluids. So, they need to be properly protected during administration and their release needs to be precisely targeted and controlled. The dried hydrogels (also called xerogels) are used nowadays for effective delivery of this drug by over coming various barrier. They are clear, and swelling in water takes a long time. The slow swelling process is due to slow diffusion of water through the compact polymer chains. So they mainly used for controlled drug delivery. Many applications required fast swelling of dried hydrogels. Superporous hydrogels swell in the order of a minute regardless of their size. They can be made to possess high mechanical strength even after swelling by adding composite materials, e.g., Ac-Di-Sol. Peptide drugs have been administered mostly by the parenteral route, and no peroral formulation has been developed to date. Super porous hydrogels and their composites that increase their volume by about 200-fold deliver the incorporated peptide drug directly to the gut wall.