Intranasal systemic delivery, applications

Wermeling, D.P., J.L. Miller, and A.C. Rudy. 2002. Systemic intranasal drug delivery Concepts and applications. Drug Deliv Tech 2 56. 

Multiple emulsions have been widely studied as means of delivering drugs via oral, topical, and parenteral routes. The applications include protein delivery (Cournarie et al., 2004), delivery of antibiotics to the vagina (Tedajo et al., 2005), sustained delivery (Vaziri and Warburton, 1994), and vaccine delivery (Bozkir and Hayta, 2004). The immunological response to a vaccine also depends on the route of administration. Most current vaccines are administered intramuscularly, which induces immunization as a systemic immunity. However, the live polio vaccine and the live typhoid vaccine are administered orally. Local immunization (oral, intranasal, or intravagina) may be preferred, since mucosal surfaces are the common entrance to many pathogens. Moreover local immunization induces both mucosal and systemic immunity. Ease of administration and avoidance of systemic side effects are additional advantages of local immunization (Walker, 1994 Shalaby, 1995). Nevertheless, successful local immunization has only been achieved with a limited number of oral vaccines. Also there are very few studies on multiple emulsions used in the immunization process, especially on parenteral and oral administration. 

As an exemplification, a novel system called PecSys (PS), which is a pectin based drug delivery system, is developed to gel on mucosal surfaces when applied. These systems are currently focused in their application in intranasal delivery of drugs where it plays the role of optimizing the absorption of lipophilic drugs into the circulation. The PS based systems were commonly used for the intranasal formulations constituting opioid analgesics for the rapid pain relief The lead product that uses the PS system is NasalFent, which is a fentanyl nasal spray formulation [82]. 

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