Special Issue "Assessment of the Performance of Non-systemic Locally-Acting Drugs in the Gastrointestinal Tract"

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit an original manuscript to the Special Issue “Assessment of the performance of non-systemic locally acting drugs in the gastrointestinal tract”.

Non-systemic drugs are a unique subset of orally administered agents that exert their therapeutic effects locally in the GI tract. Unlike traditional drugs, the plasma concentration cannot be used as a surrogate for the PK/PD performance of non-systemic APIs. Moreover, in terms of locally acting drug products, administered to exert local action in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, it is often not feasible/easy to quantify the rate at which, and extent to which, a drug becomes available at the site of action.

Understanding and predicting regional drug concentrations in the lumen, mucosal layer, epithelia and lamina propria, as well as the mechanism of action, and intra- and inter-subject variability, is of great importance for the discovery and product development of non-systemic drugs.

This Special Issue will highlight the advances, challenges and opportunities in an assessment of the performance of non-systemic locally acting drugs in the gastrointestinal tract.

Currently available, or novel, in vivo, in vitro and ex vivo methodologies to quantify/assess regional drug concentrations in the GI tract, as well as strategies to develop, verify and validate PBPK/PD models, describing the regional dissolution, absorption and disposition of drug substances along the GI tract, are strongly encouraged for submission to this Special Issue. Original research papers and review articles are both welcome.

In addition, original research and/or reviews pertaining to in vitro and PBPK-PBBM/PD models for locally acting drugs with systemic exposure would be relevant, provided that these models are used to support the development and validation of models for non-systemic locally acting drug in the GI tract.

Dr. Konstantinos Stamatopoulos
Dr. Nikoletta Fotaki
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmaceutics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• non-systemic drugs
• non-absorbable drugs
• loally acting drugs
• biopharmaceutics
• controlled drug delivery
• non-absorbable markers
• PBPK/PD modeling
• PBBM modeling
• PBPK/QSP modeling