Niosomes
During the past decades the use of vesicles for drug delivery has been established. One of these vesicular systems is the niosomes; these may be unilamellar or multilamellar. The niosome bilayer is different from the liposome bilayer in that niosomes are
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Niosomes Carlotta Marianecci, Luisa Di Marzio, Federica Rinaldi, Sara Esposito, and Maria Carafa
Abstract During the past decades the use of vesicles for drug delivery has been established. One of these vesicular systems is the niosomes; these may be unilamellar or multilamellar. The niosome bilayer is different from the liposome bilayer in that niosomes are prepared from uncharged single-chain surfactants with the incorporation of cholesterol or other amphiphilic molecules, whereas liposomes are prepared from double-chain phospholipids (neutral or charged) and cholesterol. As with liposomes, the in vitro/in vivo properties of niosomes depend both on the composition of the bilayer and on method of their production. Niosomes may be used as carriers of both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs. In this chapter, niosome formation, composition, preparation, characterization, evaluation, advantages, disadvantages, and the more recent applications of niosomes are extensively discussed.
4.1 Introduction The increasing interest in designing new drug delivery vehicles stems from the necessity to overcome the barriers to drug action, such as limited circulation half-life, reduced solubility, and undesirable side-effects associated with a given therapeutic agent. Some candidate drugs are not bioavailable in parenteral formulations or systemic doses, making the drug useless, regardless of its therapeutic potential. The use of pharmaceutical carriers to enhance the in vivo efficiency of many drugs
C. Marianecci • F. Rinaldi • M. Carafa (*) Department of Drug Chemistry and Technologies, University “Sapienza” of Rome, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] L. Di Marzio • S. Esposito Department of Pharmacy, University “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti, Italy I.F. Uchegbu et al. (eds.), Fundamentals of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-9164-4_4, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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is well established in pharmaceutical research and in the clinical setting (Alonso 2004; Gregoriadis 1988; Müller 1991; Rolland 1993) and thousands of scientists are involved in the study of liposomes and other colloidal structures as carriers for drug delivery. Liposomes, described by Bangham in 1965 (Bangham et al. 1965), have been prepared with a variety of phospholipids and have been extensively studied as drug carriers (Alberts and Garcia 1997; Bandak et al. 1999; Berry et al. 1998; Boswell et al. 1998; Gabizon et al. 1998; Manosroi and Manosroi 1997; Tsuchihashi et al. 1999). However, problems arise with the general application of liposomes; problems include their low physical and chemical stability. One alternative to the use of phospholipids is the use of non-ionic surfactants (Bouwstra et al. 1997; Horiuchi and Tajima 2000; Uchegbu and Florence 1995; van Hal et al. 1996). Vesicles formed by surfactants are known as niosomes or non-ionic surfactant vesicles (NSVs). Niosomes are similar in terms of structure and certain physical properties to liposomes (Uchegbu and Florence 1995). The self
