Giovanna Rassu

University of Sassari, Italy

Title: Intranasal drug delivery systems: importance of type and composition for inducing systemic or brain delivery of drugs

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Biography

Giovanna Rassu is Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy of the University of Sassari, where she performs her research and teaching activities in the drug delivery field. Her research activity is mainly focused on the development of micro- and nanoparticles for different routes of administration (nasal, oral, and cutaneous); these studies are in collaborations with various national and international research groups. To date, she is (co)authored of 65 scientific publications and more than 90 congress communications/proceedings. She reviews manuscripts submitted to different prestigious journals of the drug delivery categories and she is Review Editor for Frontiers in Medical Technology. Moreover, she is Guest Editor of Special Issue "Mucoadhesive and Mucosal Drug Delivery Systems" of Pharmaceutics. She is inventor of Italian Patent titled "Permeation Cells" (number: 102017000089514; European extension application (PCT / IB2018 / 055726) required) suitable for the permeation studies of substances through membranes or tissues.

Abstract

Intranasal administration is a non-invasive route for drug delivery and an interesting alternative to conventional drug administration (e.g. oral, parenteral). Due to the different anatomical and physiological characteristics of nasal cavity, the intranasal administration can strongly affect the bioavailability of drugs and, then, the pharmacotherapy. Nasally administered drugs can be deposited on the respiratory and olfactory epithelia. From the respiratory epithelium, the drugs can be absorbed into the systemic circulation with rapid onset of action, and avoidance of first-pass metabolism. The drugs deposited on the olfactory epithelium can have a direct access to the central nervous system (CNS) via a paracellular or transcellular transport through olfactory neurons or olfactory epithelial cells. Trigeminal nerves are also potential way of drug access in the brain. The nose-to-brain transport of drugs allows to bypass blood-brain barrier, to reduce the systemic exposure and, thus, the adverse effects of the drugs and to lower the doses to be administered. However, due to the mucociliary clearance and the poor mucosal permeability of several drugs, an important requirement for this route is the development of appropriate delivery systems. In fact, the predominant pathway depends on the properties of the therapeutic, but also on the characteristics of the formulation and excipients, and on the delivery device that obviously influence the deposition site. Aim of this presentation is to show how the type and composition of formulation affects drug permeation across the nasal mucosa and induces systemic or brain delivery of the drug. As example, the performances of particulate formulations based on chitosan and its salts for nose-to-brain delivery of drugs will be presented and compared with those obtained using methyl-?-cyclodextrin alone or in combination. The recent results on nasal nanoparticles will described.