Alternative drug delivery approaches for the therapy of inflammatory bowel disease

This article shall give an overview on drug delivery systems for new therapeutic strategies in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. The various features of the different approaches allowing locally restricted drug delivery to the inflamed colon are discussed including the main physiological and pathophysiological limitations for the different systems. Conventional drug delivery systems are tightly adapted from developments for colonic delivery by oral administration triggered by release mechanisms owing to the physiological environment that these systems encounter in the colonic region. The newer developments in this context aim for an increased selectivity of drug delivery by targeting mechanisms which have a closer relation to pathophysiological particularities of the disease. Therefore, we were focused especially on new strategies for such treatment including liposomal formulations, cyclodextrins, micro- or nanoparticles, viral gene therapy approaches, and others. Effective and selective delivery even of an otherwise nonspecifically acting drug could provide new therapeutic pathways in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.