A functional pellet serves additional functionalities to the oral drug formulation. As example, tartaric acid pellets dissolve in the GIT and thus serving a localized acidic environment. This assist the dissolution and up-take of weakly basic drugs.
Oppositely, also actives may pelletized, such as Ibuprofen becomes Ibuprofen DC100. Pelletized actives do not only serve addiditional funtionalities to the formulation, but also simply process and developement steps.