hydrophobic drugs

The topical drug delivery facilitates a direct entry into the skin as a vital organ for diagnosis and cure without any threat of passing through first pass metabolism. Emulgels are nothing but, the combination of emulsion and gel. Emulgel is one of the novel strategy widely employed in acne, fungal infection, arthritis, inflammation, psoriasis and other topical infections. Emulgel for dermatological use has several constructive properties such as being thixotropic, emollient, easily spreadable, easily washable, greaseless, non-staining, water-soluble, greater shelf life, bio-friendly, clear and pleasant appearance. Emulgel is emulsion, either of water in oil or oil in water type, which are gelled by mixing with gelling agent such as HPMC, carbopol etc. However, gels carry a drawback in delivery of hydrophobic drug moiety and thus emulgel can prove a novel topical drug delivery for hydrophobic drugs by incorporating hydrophobic drug into gels using o/w emulsions. Emulgel helps in the incorporation of hydrophobic drugs into the oil phase and then dispersion of oil globules in aqueous phase as a continuous phase, resulting in o/w emulsion and this emulsion can be incorporate into gel base.

Enhancement of the solubility, dissolution and bioavailability of the drugs is the challenging task for the research sector. As many of the solubility enhancement techniques are available to achieve the desired goal, but the older techniques don’t show the expected results for solubility enhancement and bioavailability as well, and they are unstable also some time.  But today the scenario is different because the novel techniques of solubility enhancement are available, such as hydrotropy, supercritical fluid process, sonocrystallisation, inclusion complex system, spray drying, microwave assisted techniques, etc. this novel techniques have the ability to give the reproducible results for solubility enhancement in pharmaceutical product development.  present review article deals with the different techniques for the solubility enhancement of the poorly soluble drug candidates.