MICROSPHERE AS DRUG CARRIER: A REVIEW

Development of microspheres is a promising technology for controlled release and drug targeting. Various types of microspheres such as bio-adhesive, magnetic, floating, radioactive and polymeric microspheres are developed for various purposes. Microspheres occupied a central place in novel drug delivery. There are various departments of medicine like cancer, pulmonary, cardiology, radiology, gynaecology, andoncology etc, numerous drugs are used and they are delivered by various types of drug delivery system. Among them microspheric drug delivery system has gained enormous attention due to its wide range of application as it covers targeting the drug to particular site to imaging and helping the diagnostic features. It also has advantage over various other dosage forms like we know for lungs disease now a days aerolised drugs are used for local delivery of drugs but it has disadvantage of shorter duration of action so for sustained release and reducing side effects and hence to achieve better patient compliance microspheres can be used. It also has advantage over liposomes as it is physicochemically more stable. Moreover the microspheres are of micron size so they can easily fit into various capillary beds which are also having micron size. The purpose of the review is to compile various types of microspheres, different methods to preparation, its applications and also various parameters to evaluate their efficiency.