Development, evaluation and recent progress of ocular in situ gelling drug delivery vehicle based on poloxamer 407

The fabrication of an effective in situ gelling ophthalmic drug delivery vehicle is recently received enormous interest to overcome the demerits of conventional ocular solutions and achieve desired therapeutic efficacy. Poloxamer 407 and poloxamer 188 are among the most commonly used poloxamers in ocular drug delivery due to thermoreversible gelation property, high solubility in water and transparent gel formation capacity which does not hamper normal vision. In this review, we have mostly focused on the thermogelation properties of poloxamer 407 as well as various methods to evaluate the poloxamer based ophthalmic in situ gel for their potential applications in ocular drug delivery and have also discussed about different strategies to improve thermogelation properties and drug release behavior of poloxamer 407 based ophthalmic formulations. We have also discussed here that the use of poloxamer 407 as thermoreversible in situ gel in colloidal drug carrier systems has proved to be an effective strategy for increasing penetration of drugs, enhancing therapeutic action, and reducing drug release rate.