Solid Dispersion as a Technical Solution to Boost the Dissolution Rate and Bioavailability of Poorly Water-Soluble Drugs

Solid dispersion (SD) is one of the oldest and widely utilized techniques to improve the solubility of slowly dissolving drugs. A variety of pharmaceutically compatible additives using different emerging technology is used for preparing SDs. Multiple approaches were designed to prepare SDs by such as kneading, co-milling, fusion, solvent evaporation and various solvent-associated methods. The selection of appropriate preparation method and carrier is vital for producing a homogenous product affecting its stability and biological activity. Many attempts were recently carried out to improve the scalability of the applied approaches and the results were novel preparation methods such as KinetiSol, Electrospinning and Hot-melt extrusion. In the present review, drug carriers used to formulate SD were classified as small molecular weight carriers, large molecular weight named polymeric carriers and functionalized polymeric ones. Moreover, new attractive SD formulated using the newly emerged natural carriers recently joined the field of the pharmaceutical industry.