Abstract

OPHTHALMIC IN-SITU GEL: AN OVERVIEW

Pallavi R. Kute*, S B. Gondkar and R B.Saudagar

ABSTRACT

Ocular drug delivery has been a major challenging and interesting field for the pharmaceutical scientists due to unique anatomy and physiology of eye.The major problem encountered in ocular drug delivery is the rapid loss of the drug through lachrymal drainage which results in poor bioavailability and therapeutic response of the drug.There are some static(different layers of the eye i.e.cornea,sclera,retina) and dynamic(blood aqueous and blood retinal barrier) barriers which also affect the bioavailability of the drug. In-situ gels are the liquid preparations which upon instillation undergoes phase transition in cul-de-sac of the eye to form a viscous gel and this occurs due to the environmental changes in the eye(i.e.due to change in temperature, change in pH and ion induced change). This review is to specify the basic anatomy and physiology of human eye, various approaches used for formulation of in-situ gels and polymers used in the formulation of insitu gels.

Keywords: In situ gel,biodegradable polymers,pH sensitive,temperature sensitive,ion sensitive.