Liquisolid Compact Techniques: A Review

Oral drug administration has been one of the most convenient and widely accepted route of delivery for most of the therapeutic agents. It is one of the most extensively used routes of drug administration because of its obvious advantages of ease of administration, improved patient compliance, and convenience. The bioavailability of many poorly water-soluble drugs is limited by their dissolution rates which are in turn controlled by the effective surface area present for dissolution. The enhancement of oral bioavailability of poorly water soluble drugs remains one of the most challenging aspects of drug development. A more recent technique, "powdered solution technology" or "Liquisolid technology", has been applied to prepare water-insoluble drugs into rapid-release solid dosage forms. The limited solubility of drugs is a challenging issue for industry, during the development of the ideal solid dosage form unit. Liquisolid technique is a novel and promising approach to overcome this consequence. The technique is based upon the dissolving the insoluble drug in the nonvolatile solvent and admixture of drug loaded solutions with appropriate carrier and coating materials to convert into acceptably flowing and compressible powders. The selection of non toxic hydrophilic solvent, carrier, coating materials and its ratios are independent of the individual chemical moieties. The increased bioavailability is due to either increased surface area of drug available for release, an increased aqueous solubility of the drug, or improved wettability of the drug particles.