Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 23, Issue 43, 2017

Background: Current treatments for neurodegenerative diseases are challenging, due to the absence of fully effective medicines. One of the major problems associated to these is the occurrence of non-targeting events, which leads to adverse effects and requires frequent dose administration. Methods: Researches have been performed to develop new drug delivery systems administrated by alternative routes. For example, the Read More

Background: Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been described as a relevant contributor to tumorigenicity, metastasis, tumor recurrence and drug resistance, making this cell population a relevant target in solid tumors. Methods: This has stimulated the development of different therapeutic strategies often targeting surface markers (CD44, epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) and nucle Read More

Background: Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) are colloidal drug carrier systems that contribute several properties required from a sophisticated drug delivery system for increasing drug bioavailability and providing effective therapy. Many advantages of SLN have been reported over traditional dosage forms and their colloidal counterparts since the early 1990s. They were optimized for oral drug delivery for the first time. The fir Read More

Background: SLNs and NLCs have remarkably wide range of properties which make them useful for several potential applications in drug delivery, clinical medicine, and research, as well as in parenteral, dermal, pulmonary and topical delivery of drugs. The unique size-dependent properties of the solid lipid nanoparticles make them at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology offering development of new t Read More

Background: Lipid nanoparticles have attracted increased degree of scientific and commercial attention in the last decade. The lipidic nanoparticles have emerged as a potential alternative to other nano-scale systems due to their various advantages over them and also due to overcoming the shortcomings of the already available colloidal systems like liposomes, niosomes and polymeric nanoparticles. Description: These have b Read More

Background: Lipid based nanocarriers have gained recently enormous interest for pharmaceutical application. They have the potential to provide controlled drug release and to target the drug to a specific area. In addition, lipid based nanocarriers can improve the bioavailability of drugs suffering from high hepatic first-pass metabolism, by enhancing their transport via the lymphatic system. The main components of lipid Read More

Background: Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) and the next generation of nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) seem to be a very promising alternative to other colloidal carriers, such as liposomes, microemulsions, and polymeric nanoparticles. These combine the advantages of the cited nanocarriers and can improve the dissolution rate in biological fluids, increase the drug absorption, improve the tissue distribution in the Read More

Background: Lipid nanoparticles are considered one of the most promising systems for controlled release of therapeutic molecules highly hydrophobic and with low biodisponibility. Solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructured lipids carriers are widely seen as the workhorses of drug delivery systems because of low toxicity, enhanced encapsulation capacity, controlled drug kinetic release, easy tailoring and targeting Read More

Background: Topical drug administration offers an attractive route with minimal invasiveness. It also avoids limitations of intravenous administration such as the first pass metabolism and presystemic elimination within the gastrointestinal tract. Furthermore, topical drug administration is safe, have few side effects, is easy to apply, and offers a fast onset of action. However, the development of effective topical formulations still Read More

Background: The eyes are among the most readily accessible organs in terms of location in the body, yet drug delivery to eye tissues is particularly problematic. The anatomy, physiology and biochemistry of the eye limit the ophthalmic delivery of drugs. Numerous strategies in ophthalmic drug delivery have been made to expand the bioavailability and to prolong the remaining time of drugs treated topically to eye. Methods: Des Read More

Background: Lipid nanoparticles have been extensively studied for drug delivery of antifungal drugs, especially for dermatophytosis treatments. They can accumulate in skin appendages and release drugs in a controlled manner and also increase skin moisture, due to the formation of an occlusive film. Since moisture heavily influences nail and skin permeability, these systems seem to pose great potential for antifungal dr Read More

Background: The class of fluoroquinolone antibiotics, due to its core chemical modifications, is considered as wide-spectrum antibacterial drugs with useful pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. However, because of their poor solubility in water, they are used as salts (lactates or hydrochlorides). Fluoroquinolones, bacterial membranes and eukaryotic cell membranes interactions are well known and their perme Read More

Background: Thousands of bioactive compounds are identified and isolated from the medicinal plants every year, of which many possess significant health benefits. However, the overwhelming majority of entities suffer from poor water solubility and membrane permeability that impedes them approaching the clinical stage. Methods: Lipid nanoparticles have shown to be a versatile platform for advanced delivery of various ther Read More

Background: Multidrug resistance in cancer is the ability of a cancer cell to resist treatment with a wide range of structurally and functionally dissimilar chemotherapeutics. The resistant phenotype could arise in response to several cellular changes that ultimately result in a decrease in intracellular drug accumulation (or effectiveness), either by limiting cellular drug entry, or by expulsion of those molecules that have ma Read More