%0 Journal Article
%T Pharmacosomes: An Emerging Novel Vesicular Drug Delivery System for Poorly Soluble Synthetic and Herbal Drugs
%A Archana Pandita
%A Pooja Sharma
%J ISRN Pharmaceutics
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/348186
%X In the arena of solubility enhancement, several problems are encountered. A novel approach based on lipid drug delivery system has evolved, pharmacosomes. Pharmacosomes are colloidal, nanometric size micelles, vesicles or may be in the form of hexagonal assembly of colloidal drug dispersions attached covalently to the phospholipid. They act as befitting carrier for delivery of drugs quite precisely owing to their unique properties like small size, amphiphilicity, active drug loading, high entrapment efficiency, and stability. They help in controlled release of drug at the site of action as well as in reduction in cost of therapy, drug leakage and toxicity, increased bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs, and restorative effects. There has been advancement in the scope of this delivery system for a number of drugs used for inflammation, heart diseases, cancer, and protein delivery along with a large number of herbal drugs. Hence, pharmacosomes open new challenges and opportunities for improved novel vesicular drug delivery system. 1. Introduction The novel drug delivery system has been exploited a lot in the past few decades, and attention is also being paid to further develop this system. The two ideal requirements for a system to be novel are(1)drug delivery at a predetermined rate and for pre-determined span of time;(2)conveying the active entity to the target site.At this point of time, there is no such system that can fulfil all these requirements. So a lot of efforts are required to accomplish them using novel approaches. These goals are being achieved by concentrating attention either on drug distribution by unifying drug into a carrier system, modifying molecular drug construct, or by restraining drug release in the bioenvironment to ascertain assigned distribution profile. Novel drug delivery attempts to minimize the side effects and maintain relatively unvarying and potent levels of drug in the body. The carriers or chemical derivatization may help to localize the drug action spatially in diseased tissue or organ or adjacent to it [1]. Among the different pharmaceutical carriers (Figure 1), the vesicular carriers are extremely organized assemblies of bilayers of lipid that may be single or concentric in nature formed when the building blocks (amphipathic) of these bilayers encounter water [2]. The clinical use of many drugs particularly chemotherapeutic agents is limited because of their narrow therapeutic window [1]. So the novel approaches in drug delivery serve as a helping hand to achieve all these imperative goals. Figure 1: Different
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.pharmaceutics/2013/348186/