Solubilization and Controlled Release of Poorly Water-Soluble Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

In the last decade, emerging trends in combinatorial chemistry and drug design have rendered newly developed drug molecules with higher lipophilicity, larger molecular weight, and poor water solubility. These properties are associated with a variety of rate limiting dissolution, slow absorption, and low bioavailability that may lead to the failures of developing many promising agents, including lead compounds, in vital therapeutic areas. At first, the optimization of physicochemical properties of such poorly water-soluble molecules for enhanced solubility, dissolution, and ultimately enhanced bioavailability is the most important prerequisite for pharmaceutical researchers to develop drug products. A variety of approaches have been used to overcome the poor water solubility and enhance the dissolution rate of drugs, such as solid dispersion, salt formation, supercritical fluid technology, prodrugs, co-crystal formation, cyclodextrin complexes, lipid-based formulations, and nanosized drug delivery systems, etc. Secondly, to achieve an appropriate delivery system of poorly water soluble drugs that can modulate the drug release at desired rates, times and/ or locations for an effective medication, state-of-art technologies of engineering the surface of delivery systems as well as a modification of the payload are taken into consideration. Of note, once these delivery systems are formulated to satisfy enhanced solubility and controlled release, they offer several patient-centered advantages, such as reduced high total doses, reduced dosing frequency, and gastrointestinal side effects, and improved patient acceptance and compliance. In addition, the most up-to-date studies have showcased promising natural delivery systems of poor water molecules with versatile and multifunctional activities as the next generation of theranostic (therapeutic and diagnostic) applications in medicine.  

This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest progress and research of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical technologies to address and solve the problems of poorly water-soluble drugs, as well as present innovative delivery systems of these drugs and formulation of various routes of administration via solubilization and controlled release. The Special Issue also covers studies that could help shed light on how the new delivery systems worked out to present the most relevant contributions in developing effective medical applications of poorly water soluble drugs for patient centricity. 

Prof. Dr. Beom-Jin Lee
Dr. Phuong Ha-Lien Tran
Guest Editors

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