Nasal drug delivery: new developments and strategies

The use of the nasal route for the delivery of challenging drugs has created much interest in recent years in the pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, drug delivery companies are actively pursuing the development of novel nasal drug-delivery systems and the exploitation of these for administration of conventional generic drugs and peptides, both in-house and with partners in the pharmaceutical industry. This review sets out to discuss some new developments and strategies in nasal drug delivery. An exiting discovery that drugs can be transported directly from nose to brain via the olfactory pathway is discussed and examples of proof-of-concept in man are given.