Recent advancements in transdermal patches

Transdermal route of drug administration is novel as well as reliable means of sustained drug delivery. With more and more research being carried out in this field and increasing interest of researchers in this form of drug delivery, number of transdermal devices reaching the marketplace are expected to increase sharply. The aim of this review is to present latest explorations carried out in recent years utilizing possible drug candidates. Also, new polymer candidates along with novel penetration enhancers have been presented. For the purpose of study, various databases viz. Sciencedirect, Web of Knowledge, Pubmed, Google Scholar, etc. have been explored. After going through all the research work done by researchers in recent past it is appropriate to state that transdermal route is no longer reliant on few polymers and penetration enhancers but studies have now provided lot many more options for transdermal device formulation as evident from the data compilations. It can be concluded that most of the researchers have been utilizing HPMC as the preferred film forming polymer but recently use of Eudragit grades also has gained interest amongst scientists.