Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Chemical Penetration Enhancers for Transdermal Drug Delivery Systems

Inayat Bashir Pathan¹ , Mallikarjuna C Setty²

¹Department of Pharmaceutics, M.E.S College of Pharmacy, Sonai. Maharashtra; ²Department of Pharmaceutics, Sarasvati College of Pharmacy, Moniabad, Andhra Pradesh, Indian.

For correspondence:- Inayat Pathan Email: inayat.p78631@rediffmail.com Tel:09921227045

Received: 22 November 2007 Accepted: 29 November 2008 Published: 17 April 2009

Citation: Pathan IB, Setty MC. Chemical Penetration Enhancers for Transdermal Drug Delivery Systems. Trop J Pharm Res 2009; 8(2):173-179 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v8i2.11

© 2009 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Skin as an important site of drug application for both local and systemic effects. However in skin, the stratum corneum is the main barrier for drug penetration. Penetration enhancement technology is a challenging development that would increase the number of drugs available for transdermal administration. The permeation of drug through skin can be enhanced by both chemical penetration enhancement and physical methods. In this review, we have discussed the chemical penetration enhancement technology for transdermal drug delivery as well as the probable mechanisms of action.

Keywords: Transdermal delivery; skin; chemical penetration enhancers