Penetration enhancer
substance that facilitates penetration of drugs into or through skin or other biological membranes
Penetration enhancers (also called chemical penetration enhancers, absorption enhancers or sorption promotors) are chemical compounds that can facilitate the penetration of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) into or through the poorly permeable biological membranes. These compounds are used in some pharmaceutical formulations to enhance the penetration of APIs in transdermal drug delivery and transmucosal drug delivery (for example, ocular, nasal, oral and buccal). They typically penetrate into the biological membranes and reversibly decrease their barrier properties.
Transdermal drug delivery
Human skin is a very impermeable membrane that protects the body from ingress of harmful substances and prevents water loss from underlying organs. However, this seriously limits the use of skin as a site for drug administration. One of the approaches to facilitate transdermal drug delivery is the use of penetration enhancers. Many different compounds have been explored as potential penetration enhancers to facilitate transdermal drug delivery. These include dimethylsulphoxide, azones (such as laurocapram), pyrrolidones (for example 2-pyrrolidone), alcohols (ethanol and decanol), glycols (for example propylene glycol), esters (such as isopropyl myristate), surfactants, urea, various hydrocarbons and terpenes. Different potential skin site and modes of action were identified for penetration enhancement through the skin. In some cases, penetration enhancers may disrupt the packing motif of the intercellular lipid matrix or keratin domains.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q115285945. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Penetration enhancer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.