Mucoadhesion and mucosa-mimetic materials - a mini-review

Mucoadhesion describes an attractive interaction between dosage form and mucosal membrane. The evaluation of mucoadhesive excipients often requires the use of ex vivo mucosal tissues taken from laboratory animals. These can be difficult to source, highly heterogeneous, and require the use of animal products. Thus, from both a user-convenience and ethical point-of-view, it is desirable to produce a synthetic alternative to these tissues - a mucosa-mimetic material. In this mini-review, the use of alternative materials to test the performance of mucoadhesives is reviewed and discussed. There is a surprising prevalence of the use of mucosa-mimics in the literature, which hitherto has not been compiled and compared.