Sampling and analysis of GI fluids deepens the understanding of oral drug products.
By Joachim Brouwers, Ph.D., Jens Van Den Abeele, Ph.D., Patrick Augustijns, Ph.D., all with Drug Delivery and Disposition, University of Leuven, Belgium
An in-depth understanding of the behavior of drugs in the human gastrointestinal (GI) environment is critical to continued progress in the development of oral drug products. GI drug concentration profiling is a valuable approach to provide such understanding. The efficiency of drugs is often hampered by pharmacokinetic issues that lead to insufficient and/or variable drug concentrations at the target site. Understanding the fate of drugs inside the human body is therefore critical to optimize both the development and use of drugs. For orally administered systemic drugs, GI processes, including drug release, dissolution, precipitation, degradation, and mucosal permeation, dictate absorption into the the blood circulation.