Intestinal transporters and oral absorption enhancing strategies based on these transporters

Abstract

Utilizing transporter-mediated drug delivery to achieve effective oral absorption emerges as a promising strategy. Researchers have been concentrated on discovering solutions to the issues of low solubility and poor permeability of insoluble drugs, whereas, current reports have revealed that drug transporter proteins are abundantly expressed in the mucosa of intestinal epithelial cells, and that their mediated drug absorption effectively improved the bioavailability of orally administered drugs. There are two main categories based on the transporter mechanism, which include the family of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters with efflux effects that reduce drug bioavailability and the family of solute carriers (SLC) transporters with uptake effects that promote drug absorption, respectively. Thus, we review studies of intestinal transporter-mediated delivery of drugs to enhance oral absorption, including the types of intestinal transporters, distribution characteristics, and strategies for enhancing oral absorption using transporter-mediated drug delivery systems are summarized, with the aim of providing important theoretical references for the development of intestinal-targeted delivery system.