Abstract
The drug delivery of macromolecules such as proteins and peptides has become an important area of research and represents the fastest expanding share of the market for human medicines. The most common method for delivering macromolecules is parenterally. However parenteral administration of some therapeutic macromolecules has not been effective because of their rapid clearance from the body. As a result, most macromolecules are only therapeutically useful after multiple injections, which causes poor compliance and systemic side effects.
Therefore, there is a need to improve delivery of therapeutic macromolecules to enable non-invasive delivery routes, less frequent dosing through controlled-release drug delivery, and improved drug targeting to increase efficacy and reduce side effects.
Non-invasive administration routes such as intranasal, pulmonary, transdermal, ocular and oral delivery have been attempted intensively by formulating macromolecules into nanoparticulate carriers system such as polymeric and lipidic nanoparticles.
This review discusses barriers to drug delivery and current formulation technologies to overcome the unfavorable properties of macromolecules via non-invasive delivery (mainly intranasal, pulmonary, transdermal oral and ocular) with a focus on nanoparticulate carrier systems. This review also provided a summary and discussion of recent data on non-invasive delivery of macromolecules using nanoparticulate formulations.