Pankaj P. Nerkar

As a site for drug delivery the oral cavity offers advantages over the conventional gastrointestinal route and the parenteral and other alternative routes of drug administration. It provides direct entry into the systemic circulation thereby avoiding the hepatic first pass effect. Verapamil HCl belongs to a drug group of calcium channel antagonists. The oral absorption of the drug from these forms is 90% but its bioavailability approaches only 10–20%, due to a extensive first-pass effect. Here attempt is made to extract mucilage and use as gelling and mucoadhesive agent. The yield of natural mucoadhesive fenugreek extract was 28-29 percent. Fenugreek mucilage shows synergistic effect with xanthan gum and provide higher viscosity. Fenugreek is used with xanthan gum in the selected ratio of 2.5:1. Different parameters were evaluated like % yield of fenugreek, viscosity, gel strength, mucoadhesive study, in-vitro diffusion study, ex-vivo permeation study and differential scanning calorimetry. The mucosal permeation of drug from the formulation was evaluated using Franz diffusion cell, goat buccal mucosa as semi-permeable membrane. The amount of the drug released was determined by evaluating drug diffused through the membrane by using UV- spectrophotometry. The verapamil HCl release was sustained up to 6 hrs by optimizing concentration of fenugreek and xanthan gum.