A Novel Three-pronged Approach for Colon Delivery of Sulfasalazine: Concomitant Use of pH- Responsive, Microbially Triggered Polymers and Liquisolid Technology.

Objective: A major challenge in targeting orally administered drugs to colon is their passage through the long gastrointestinal path comprising highly variant conditions in terms of pH, viscosity, gut motility and microbial flora. Approaches to pH controlled release and microbially triggered release have proved to be successful in achieving colon targeting only to a partial extent.

Methods: In an attempt to improve targeting, both these approaches have been combined together with the approach of liquisolid technology which, hitherto, remains unexplored for colon targeting.

In-vitro and In-vivo Pharmacokinetic Evaluation of Guar Gum-Eudragit® S100 Based Colon-targeted Spheroids of Sulfasalazine Co-administered with Probiotics.

Background: Polysaccharide based delivery systems have been successfully used to target drugs to colon. In some recent reports, the superiority of concomitant administration of probiotics with such systems has been established. However, the pharmacokinetics of such symbiotic therapy remain unexplored hitherto.

Novel biorelevant dissolution medium as a prognostic tool for polysaccharide-based colon-targeted drug delivery system.

To overcome the limitations of the conventionally used methods for evaluation of orally administered colon-targeted delivery systems, a novel dissolution method using probiotics has been recently reported. In the present study, universal suitability of this medium composed of five different probiotics is established. Different delivery systems - mini tablets, liquisolid compacts, and microspheres coated with different polysaccharides - were prepared and subjected to sequential dissolution testing in medium with and without microbiota.