Drug nanocrystals: In vivo performances

Over the past few decades, there has been a considerable research interest in drug nanocrystal system as a pharmaceutical approach for poorly soluble drugs. At the beginning lots of works have been done to study various technologies associated with production of drug nanocrystals and their in vitro physical and chemical properties, such as morphology, formulation composition, stabilities, crystalline structure and enhanced solubility and dissolution velocity. Recently, in vivo behaviors of the nanocrystals have been generally studied in animals (including human), and the results proved that drug nanocrystals could be used as a versatile formulation to alter and improve the pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and targeting properties of poorly soluble drugs. In this paper, in vivo performances of drug nanocrystals exhibited in animals in different administration route were reviewed, and the advantages of drug nanocrystals in the aspect of safety, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics and targeting delivery were discussed in detail. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.