pharma talk #7

A novel approach for drug targeting

Today, researchers and scientists are concentrating on appropriate drug delivery at specific site of action. Drug delivery has become major issue in the field of medicine as it is considered to be the most intriguing factor which could alter the properties of a drug such as therapeutic index, solubility, stability, bio-availability, and rapid degradation of a drug etc.

Different techniques have been developed over the years to overcome this particular problem so as to improve the following properties of a drug and these techniques are collectively known as "A Novel Approach for Drug Targeting", which partly based on the theory and practical applications mainly providing technical advantages over conventional release dosage forms by both chemical and physical means. 

First attempt was made by Paul Ehrlich, in 1909, who showcased the direct delivery of therapeutic agent to the diseased cell, since then, on the basis of his experiment, numbers of carriers were utilized to deliver the drug at target site; these include immunoglobulins, serum proteins, synthetic polymers, microspheres, liposomes, niosomes, erythrocytes etc. Among different carriers, vesicular drug delivery systems are found to be well renowned. Novel vesicular drug delivery systems aim to deliver the drug at a rate directed by need of body during the period of treatment, and channel the active entity to the site of action. Thus a number of novel vesicular drug delivery systems have been developed that allow drug targeting and sustained or controlled release of drug. However, two types of biocarriers are used in this system namely, Lipoidal carriers and Non-lipoidal biocarriers. Based on the type different vesicles have been developed for site specific targeting and they are:

     
    Lipoidal biocarriers for site specific targeting:

Emulsomes	Pharmacosomes
Enzymosomes	Sphigosomes
Ethosomes	Transferosomes
Liposomes	Virosomes

     Non-lipoidal biocarriers for site specific targeting:

Auasomes

Bilosomes

Aquasomes

Liposome and Niosome are of important among them and a brief review on them will be upcoming topic.