TRANSDERMAL AND TRANSMUCOSAL PHARMACEUTICAL DOSAGE FORMS FOR PALLIATIVE CARE IN CANCER THERAPY

Pain is recognized as one of the most distressing cancer-related syndromes and treatment side effects and is linked to decreased quality of life among patients. Despite the improvements of pain management guidelines proposed in the last decades, therapeutic issues are still unsolved, above all in the treatment of loco-regional painful symptoms. For example, a proper pharmacological therapy to treat cisplatin-induced ototoxicity is not currently available. Pain associated to cutaneous wounds is treated by an off-label use of systemic analgesics with high incidence of related side effects. Conventional dosage forms applied in the buccal cavity are unable to achieve suitable efficacy in the case of oral mucositis. Hence, there is a need to design novel drug delivery systems, which can be easily used in the clinical practice for an effective treatment of loco-regional painful syndromes. This doctoral thesis aimed to investigate the critical aspects of drug delivery correlated to three loco-regional syndromes and propose technological solutions to rationalize drug delivery. In particular, the experimental work focused on: (1) the development of a mucoadhesive microparticle suspension intended for treating oral mucositis and designed to combine the peculiarities of prolonged release mucoadhesive systems with those of an immediate release oromucosal solution; (2) the optimization of a biodegradable nanoparticle system intended to deliver resveratrol to cochlea in the therapy of cisplatin-induced ototoxicity; (3) the rationalization of the use of morphine derivatives, according to their chemical structure, in the management of cutaneous painful syndromes.