Advanced Drug Delivery Systems in Industrial Pharmacy: From Conventional Dosage Forms to Smart and Targeted Formulations

Advanced drug delivery systems (DDS) are one of the core and challenging areas of contemporary industrial pharmacy aiming to enhance the efficacy, safety, and adherence of the therapy. Conventional dosage forms have been the traditional dosage form for decades; however, these dosage forms have limitations such as bioavailability potential, dosing precision, and site-specific drug delivery which has led to the development of modified, novel, and smart drug delivery platforms. The aim of this narrative review is to gather the pharmaceutic and physicochemical mechanisms associated with the advanced drug delivery systems and link them with industrial production, regulatory requirements, and the clinical performance. A structured literature search was performed based on PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science database with the aim of finding research published in the last 10-15 years. Key search terms were drug delivery systems, modified release, nanoparticles, liposomes, targeted drug delivery, scale-up, Quality by Design and regulatory science. Evidence from formulation science, industrial investigations, and clinical translation is accumulating to show that while advanced DDS can improve the drug targeting, control its release and improve treatment outcome, they also impose strong challenges associated with the complexity of its manufacture, stability and regulatory approval. These dual and sometimes competitive effects point to the need for integrated frameworks for pharmaceutic - industrial evaluation. Future research enjoys linking between formulation design parameters with in vivo performance and industrial reproducibility to help with successful clinical and commercial translation.