Assessing penetration enhancers for buccal drug delivery: tools for simultaneous efficacy and toxicity screening using viable tissue biopsies

摘要

Broad-range systemic drug delivery through the buccal mucosa can only be achieved with the help of penetration enhancers. Effective enhancement, however, and particularly that obtained from bile salts, has correlated with tissue toxicity, and much effort has been devoted recently to develop reliable screening tools for enhancer efficacy and toxicity. To date, efficacy studies have been conducted in vitro with tissue mounted in diffusion cells (1), whereas toxicity studies were either conducted in cell cultures 92) or in vivo. Here, we describe simple tools which will allow both efficacy and toxicity screening to be performed simultaneously using viable tissue in vitro, and can be readily adapted for in vivo studies.