gastroretentive dosage forms
The gastric retention of orally administered dosage forms offers various benefits for the pharmacotherapy and is particularly interesting for drugs with an absorption window in the upper small intestine, narrow therapeutic window and/or poor oral bioavailability. For such drugs, prolonging the gastric residence time may allow to increase the oral bioavailability or to extend the dosing interval. In addition, by simultaneously controlling the drug release, peaks or fluctuations of the systemic drug concentration can be avoided.
In the last 40 years, different formulation concepts were developed with the aim to provide a reproducible retention in the human stomach after oral intake. For this purpose, different galenic principles such as flotation, mucoadhesion, sedimentation and expansion of the system by swelling or unfolding were proposed. However, none of these systems does work reliably under real life dosing conditions. It is therefore our aim to develop new strategies to enable the retention of dosage forms in the human stomach.
Publications:
F. Schneider, M. Koziolek, W. Weitschies. In Vitro and In Vivo Test Methods for the Evaluation of Gastroretentive Dosage Forms. Pharmaceutics. 11 (2019). 1-29
F. Schneider, M. Hoppe, M. Koziolek, W. Weitschies. Influence of Postprandial Intragastric Pressures on Drug Release from Gastroretentive Dosage Forms. AAPS PharmSciTech 19 (2018) 2843-2850