Suitability of the nasal route for both local and systemic delivery of drug substances
stems from several advantages including high vascularity, large surface area, avoidance of firstpass
metabolism, ease of drug administration, rapid attainment of therapeutic blood drug levels
and possibly high systemic bioavailability. In spite of these advantages, there are some challenges
facing this non-invasive drug delivery approach. Rapid removal of administered drugs by
respiratory mucociliary clearance system often results in low absorption, especially for large
molecular weight compounds. This problem may be addressed using novel delivery systems such
as mucoadhesive formulations. This chapter will focus on novel formulation strategies with
synthetic biopolymers for systemic drug delivery via the nasal route.
