الفهرس 
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Abstract
Buccal route is an excellent non-invasive way of drug delivery for both local and systemic purposes.
The avoidance of pre-systemic clearance at the gastrointestinal tract and by-passing hepatic first pass metabolism, the existenceof dense and homogeneous vascularization and the goodmucosal permeabilitymake the transmucosal buccal route superior tooral route for systemic administration of a wide variety of drugs.
One of the main challenges facing the buccal drug delivery systems is the residence time in buccal cavity.
Generally, solid dosage formsare preferredwhen a prolonged contact between drug and buccal mucosaas well asa sustained drug releaseare required.
Among these systems, recently spongeshave been largely studied.
Celastrol,a triterpene herbal drug also named as tripterine, is a major biologically active component extracted from root of Thunder God Vine.
Celastrol demonstratedvarious pharmacological activities including antiinflammatory, antioxidative and antimicrobial activities.
Recently, celastrol has attracted great attention due to its promising anti-cancer activity.Although the wide medicinal applications of celastrol, it suffers from many limitations that handicap itsclinical application.
Celastrol has low oral bioavailability (17.06%)attributed to its low solubility, low permeability andrapid metabolism. All these limitations make the oral route not the best one for celastrol administration; therefore switch to buccalroute of administration seems to be a promising approach.
However,in the current study,the low aqueous solubility of celastrol represents a major obstacle to attain high drug loading within the hydrophilic components of the buccal sponges.