Nasal route for antibiotics delivery: Advances, challenges and future opportunities applying the quality by design concepts

Proper antibiotic use becomes a fundamental consideration to minimize the chance of resistance threat. The nasal route has the potential as an appropriate way of administration for effectively delivering antibiotics to the target site and optimizing antibiotics therapy. Nasal route is available for treating a bacterial infection in local, systemic, and brain regions. Furthermore, this route offers many advantages for antibiotics delivery, such as increasing drug absorption, reducing undesired systemic adverse effects, and decreasing the risk of bacterial resistance. However, administering antibiotics intranasally also faces challenges, including nasal mucociliary clearance, nasal pH, a small volume of the nasal cavity, enzyme degradation, nasal biofilm mass, and the most crucial is antibiotics stability issues. Therefore, in order to successfully deliver antibiotics following nasal administration, some formulation strategies should be developed. The application of the quality-by-design concept appears as a beneficial approach for helping in finding a proper strategy for introducing antibiotics through the nasal route. This review article was aimed to summarize various experiments or advances that have been conducted in delivering antibiotics intranasally and provide suggestions that can be utilized in the early development step of antibiotics intranasal formulation. In addition, nasal anatomy and physiology, mechanisms of absorption, nasal limitations, antibiotic stability, and quality-by-design approach are also discussed. There are numerous studies have been carried out, starting from administering drug solutions directly into the nasal cavity to employing several nanocarrier formulations. Hence, owing to the benefits, the suggestion of innovative formulation might help the future development of intranasal delivery of antibiotics. [Display omitted] •Nasal route can be used to deliver antibiotic and minimize the resistance threat.•Nasal limitations and antibiotics stability are challenges that must be addressed.•Many studies have been investigated the intranasal administration of antibiotics.•QbD approach can helps to find the suitable dosage form for early development step.•In situ gelling systems: a promising alternative strategy for nasal formulation.