Raft Forming Systems: A Novel Approach to Gastric Retention

Abstract

Oral delivery of drug is the most preferable drug delivery due to the ease of administration, patient compliance and flexibility in the formulations. In recent era various technologies have been made in research and development of oral controlled release drug delivery system to overcome various physiological difficulties such as variation in gastric retention and emptying time. Conventional oral dosage forms pose low bioavailability problems due to their rapid gastric transition from stomach, especially in case of drugs which are less soluble at alkaline pH of intestine and locally acting drugs in stomach get rapidly emptied. So, frequency of dose administration in such cases is increased. Gastro retentive drug delivery system (GRDDS) is facing many challenges which can be overcome by upcoming newly emerging approach, raft forming systems (RFS). The present study provides valuable information and highlights advances in this raft forming system. Different types of smart polymers used for their formulation have also been summarized. The current review focuses on the mechanism, formulation development and evaluation aspects of the raft forming systems and also highlights parameters which may lead to response variations in altered physiological conditions are discussed as well.