Novel Drug Delivery Technologies: Innovative Strategies for Drug Re-positioning

The application of drug delivery is a valuable, cost-effective lifecycle management resource. By endowing drugs with new and innovative therapeutic benefits, drug delivery systems extend products’ profitable lifecycle, giving pharmaceutical companies competitive and financial advantages, and providing patients with improved medications. Formulation development is now being used to create new dosage forms for existing products, which not only reduces the time and expense involved in new drug development, but also helps with regard to patent protection and bypassing existing patents. Today’s culture demands convenience, a major factor determining adherence to drug therapy. Over the past few years, patient convenience-oriented research in the field of drug delivery has yielded a range of innovative drug-delivery options. As a result, various drug-delivery systems, including medicated chewing gums, oral dispersible tablets, medicated lozenges and lollipops, have now hit the marketand are very popular. These dosage forms offer a highly convenient way to dose medications, not only for special population groups with swallowing difficulties, such as children and the elderly, but for the general populace as well. This book provides valuable insights into a number of formulation design approaches that are currently being used, or could be used, to provide new benefits from existing drug molecules.

Professor Ambikanandan Misra is Professor in Faculty of Pharmacy, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Previously, he held Dean for the Faculty of Technology & Engineering (August 2011 to December 2015). Dr. Misra has been associated with the field of pharmaceutical sciences for more than 39 years. He has 8 books, 43 book chapters and 170 peer-reviewed publications in reputed journals to his credit, and holds 9 national and international patents. He has completed 22 research projects funded by the government and pharmaceutical industry and is the recipient of National award for Thrust Area programme in Technical Education (TAPTEC) project funded by AICTE, International award for Outstanding Manuscript by American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in 2008 and Best Reviewers in Pharmaceutical Sciences for Elsevier journals by Elsevier in 2011. He serves on the Editorial Board of 15 international journals, and as a reviewer for more than 50 international journals. 

With more than 15 years of teaching and research experience, Aliasgar Shahiwala is currently a Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutics and Program Director for Postgraduate Studies at Dubai Pharmacy College, Dubai. His postdoctoral research at Northeastern University, USA was specifically focused on applications of nanotechnology in the fields of drug delivery and drug targeting. Professor Shahiwala has authored several international publications, including over 40 peer-reviewed articles in reputed journals, 2 books, and 6 book chapters. In addition to serving as a reviewer, Editorial Board member and invited conference speaker, he has more than 3 years of experience working in the formulation and development divisions of large-scale pharmaceuticals manufacturers in India.