Although oral delivery has become a widely accepted route of administration of therapeutic drugs, the gastrointestinal tract presents several formidable barriers to drug delivery. Colonic drug delivery has gained increased importance not just for the delivery of the drugs for the treatment of local diseases associated with the colon but also for its potential for the delivery of proteins and therapeutic peptides. Targeting of drugs to specific sites of action provides several advantages over non-targeted drugs. These include the prevention of side effects of drugs on healthy tissues and enhancement of drug uptake by targeted cells. Certain plant polysaccharides such as amylose, inulin, pectin and guar gum remains unaffected in the presence of gastrointestinal enzymes and pave the way for the formulation of colon targeted drug delivery systems. This review will cover the use of Natural Polymer for the targeted delivery.

Shilajit is a rejuvenator (‘Rasayana’) of traditional Hindu Ayurvedic origin, which clearly has attracted considerable interest in India. Shilajit is a blackish-brown exudation of variable consistency exuding from layers of rocks in many mountain ranges of the world, especially the Himalayas and Hindukush ranges of the Indian subcontinent. Shilajit has been used as a folk medicine for general physical strengthening, anti-aging, blood sugar stabilization, urinary tract rejuvenation, enhanced brain functioning potency, kidney rejuvenation, immune system strengthening, arthritis, hypertension as well as for treating many other conditions. Shilajit (botanical name: Asphaltum), also known as mineral pitch, is a natural exudate oozed from rocks during hot weather. Shilajit is a compact mass of vegetable organic matter, which is composed of a gummy matrix interspersed with vegetable fibers and minerals.

ABSTRACT This review provides the reader with an update overview of blood group for animals and blood transfusion basis to be employed for them. The review consist of blood groups in animals blood typing cross matching, donors, blood collection, storage blood component, blood transfusion, blood component therapy, blood substitutes and adverse reaction. The safe use of blood component therapy requires knowledge of blood groups, antibody prevalence and knowledge of the means to minimize the risk of adverse reaction by including the use of proper donors and screening assays that facilitate detection of serological incompatibility. The decision to transfuse and the type of product to administer depend on several factors such as the type of anemia and the size of animal. In conclusion transfusion medicine has become more feasible in small animal practice with improved access to blood products through on-site donors, the purchase blood bank products, external donor program or the availability of blood component substitutes.

Dry coating is a coating technology for solid pharmaceutical dosage forms derived from powder coating of metals. In this technology, powdered coating materials are directly coated onto solid dosage forms without using any solvent and then heated and cured to form a coat. As a result, this technology can overcome such disadvantages caused by solvents in conventional liquid coating as serious air pollution, high time- and energy-consumption and expensive operation cost encountered by liquid coating. Several dry coating technologies, including plasticizer-dry-coating, electrostatic-drycoating, heat-dry-coating and plasticizer-electrostatic-heat-dry-coating have been developed and extensively reported. This review summarized the fundamental principles and coating processes of various dry coating technologies, and thoroughly analyzed their advantages and disadvantages as well as commercialization potentials.

To study the immunomodulatory effect of brenol tablet-A polyherbal formulation and extracts were administered orally at doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg/day to healthy rats divided into three groups consisting of six animals each. The assessment of immunomodulatory activity was carried out by testing cellular (foot pad swelling) immune responses to the antigenic challenge by sheep RBCs and by neutrophil adhesion test. On oral administration polyherbal formulation showed a significant increase in neutrophil adhesion and delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) response. Thus polyherbal formulation shows significantly potentiated the cellular immunity by facilitating the footpad thickness response to sheep RBCs in sensitized rats. The responses were statistically significant when they were compared with the control. The study stated that polyherbal formulation shows a significant stimulation of the cell mediated immunity and no effects on the humoral immunity. The study demonstrates that polyherbal formulation shows preferential stimulation of the components of cellmediated immunity

Traditionally Mushakparni-Ipomea reniformis has been used for epilepsy and various other disorders. Since there is no other data regarding this plant our efforts were devoted to study the morphological, microscopical and preliminary phytochemical profile of Ipomea reniformis.

Variation in metabolites of herbs, due to ontogenetic, ecotypic, genotypic and chemotypic factors, leads to inconsistency in herbal medicinal products, which is one the main challenges faced by natural product industry. Metabolomics detect, quantify and catalogue the time related metabolic processes of an integrated biological system. Therefore, present study aimed to use metabolomics to investigate time related metabolic changes in fruit of Piper sarmentosum in order to find the suitable time of harvesting the fruit to maintain consistency in efficacy and batch-batch reproducibility. The same size of the fruit was collected from the same location from April 2006 to August 2007 at an interval of two months. Each collection was regarded as a single independent batch. The dried fruit powder of each batch was analyzed in triplicate by FTIR spectrophotometer in potassium bromide pellets. The FTIR spectra of different batches were analysed by chemometrics, principal component analysis (PCA), to evaluate identification, classification and differentiation (ICD) using PerkinElmer application software. All the samples exhibited correlation (86.24 %) with reference to PCA 1 and 9.38 % on PCA2. The samples collected in November-December 2006 and July-August 2007 were grouped far from others on positive and negative side of the upper quadrants. These results indicated that the metabolic constituents in the samples varied in all the batches. However, correlation in the samples might be helpful to predicted consistency in pharmacological activity. The results of this study indicate that FTIR fingerprint profiles of the samples in combination with chemometrics is an effective tool of ICD which may be helpful for natural product industry to indemnify the quality and batch-batch reproducibility.

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the in vitro food effect on the bioavailability of Nimesulide and paracetamol from fixed dose combination. In vitro, effect of food on the bioavailability was studied by simulating in vivo conditions in dissolution fluid. In this study, we assessed the effect of hydrodynamic stress in presence of food and meal composition on Nimesulide containing fixed dose combination formulations by carrying out dissolution at different agitation rates (simulation of fasted and fed state) as well as in the presence of different percentage of oil (fatty food). It was concluded that agitation intensity as well as presence of oil indicates that the food can play an important role on the release of Nimesulide and paracetamol. Nimesulide and paracetamol show delayed release behavior as percentage of oil increased. This formulation had shown delayed release characteristics at all the conditions studied, showed agitation rate dependent release and also release was affected in presence of oil. Further, effect of food on the Nimesulide and paracetamol release was a function of dosage form characteristics such as disintegration time and dissolution rate, which will subsequently affect the release behavior of a formulation in presence of food.

Plants are the best source of active secondary metabolites which are beneficial to mankind. Many plant origin drugs have been reported with biological properties like Analgesic, Antiinflammatory, Antioxidant, hypoglycemic agents and many more. The successive extracts of Caesalpinia pulcherrima leaves were screened for in vitro antioxidant properties using the standard procedures. The successive extracts such as petroleum ether, ethyl acetate, methanol and water and 50 % crude methanol extracts exhibited IC50 values of respectively in DPPH and respectively in nitric oxide radical inhibition assays. The values are comparable with the standards such as ascorbic acid and quercetin. The Caesalpinia pulcherrima leaves are showing antioxidant activity.

The objective of the present study was to develop a validated stability-indicating assay method (SIAM) for valsartan subjecting it to forced decomposition under hydrolysis, oxidation, photolysis, thermal and accelerated stress conditions. Separation of drug from major and minor degradation products was successfully achieved by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) on Kromasil C18 column utilizing, water: acetonitrile in the ratio of 60:40 with 0.5 % of ortho phosphoric acid (OPA). The detection was carried out in the range of 190-400 nm. The same major decomposition product could be seen in all the decomposed solutions. The method was validated with respect to linearity, precision (including intermediate precision), accuracy and specificity. The response was linear in the drug concentration range of 20-320 µg/ml. The correlation coefficient was found 0.9996. The % RSD values for intra- and inter-day precision studies were <1 %. The recovery of the drug from a mixture of degraded samples was ranged between 98.76 to 100.9%. PDA peak purity test confirmed the specificity of the method. The method could also be successful in analysis of drug in marketed tablets subjected to stability testing under accelerated conditions of temperature, hydrolysis, humidity, and to thermal and photolytic stress.

Fast dissolving tablets (FDT) of Nimesulide were prepared by direct-compression method after incorporating superdisintegrants like Ac-Di-Sol & Sodium Starch Glycolate (SSG). The study was performed by incorporating the superdisintegrants in 2 % & 4 % concentration for each and 2 % – 2 % in combination of both superdisintegrants. Five formulations having superdisintegrants at different concentration levels were prepared to assess their efficiency. Different types of evaluation parameters for tablets were used. Tablets containing superdisintegrants in combination showed excellent in vitro dispersion time and drug release as compared to other formulations.

Myrica esculenta belongs to the family Myricaceae is a sub-temperate evergreen tree found throughout the mid-Himalayas, starting from about 1,300 meters and going up to about 2,100 meters. The tree yields a drupaceous fruit which is one of the tastiest wild fruits of the sub-Himalayan region. It is medium to large woody, evergreen, dioecious tree, 12 to 15 meters high; trunk girth, 92.5 cm; the male and the female trees have almost similar appearance.as ethnomedically bark was claimed to treat wounds and infection also, hence validation was done for its activity. The results show that the aqueous extract of Myrica esculenta has potent wound healing capacity as evident from the wound contraction and increased tensile strength. The results also indicated that Myrica esculenta extract possesses potent antioxidant activity by inhibiting lipid peroxidation and increase in the superoxide dismutase (SOD) and Catalase activity, besides antioxidant activity to understand the mechanism of wound healing activity.

The basic objective of the present work was to assess the wound healing activity of alcoholic extract of Sphaeranthus indicus flower head by providing better tissue formation and protection against microbial invasion. The flower heads of Sphaeranthus indicus were subjected for extraction with ethanol. Various ointments of extracts in various proportions were prepared and subjected for assessment of wound healing activity using four parameters i.e., Wound Contraction Studies (Excision Wound), Tensile Strength Measurement (Incision Wound), Hydroxyproline Content Determination (Incision Wound) and Histopathological Studies (Incision Wound). Based on the comparison of wound healing activity of various formulations, the formulation comprising of 2 % (w/w) alcoholic extract found to be superior to that of control and standard formulation (0.3 % w/w Neomycin standard ointment). The present studies evidenced the significant wound healing activity of Sphaeranthus indicus by increasing cellular proliferation, formation of granulation tissue, synthesis of collagen and by increase in the rate of wound contraction