Abstract
Encapsulation of cargoes in nanocontainers is widely used in different fields to solve the problems of their solubility, homogeneity, stability, protection from unwanted chemical and biological destructive effects, and functional activity improvement. This approach is of special importance in biomedicine, since this makes it possible to reduce the limitations of drug delivery related to the toxicity and side effects of therapeutics, their low bioavailability and biocompatibility. This review highlights current progress in the use of lipid systems to deliver active substances to the human body. Various lipid compositions modified with amphiphilic open-chain and macrocyclic compounds, peptide molecules and alternative target ligands are discussed. Liposome modification also evolves by creating new hybrid structures consisting of organic and inorganic parts. Such nanohybrid platforms include cerasomes, which are considered as alternative nanocarriers allowing to reduce inherent limitations of lipid nanoparticles. Compositions based on mesoporous silica are beginning to acquire no less relevance due to their unique features, such as advanced porous properties, well-proven drug delivery efficiency and their versatility for creating highly efficient nanomaterials. The types of silica nanoparticles, their efficacy in biomedical applications and hybrid inorganic-polymer platforms are the subject of discussion in this review, with current challenges emphasized.
Highlights
One of the ways to improve the effectiveness of medical therapies is the use of drug delivery systems
In summary of this section, the described work on lipid formulations with different types of macrocycles have demonstrated that non-covalent modification of liposomes with CDs or calixarenes significantly increases the stability of systems, and in the case of porphyrins, it solves a number of problems that limit their use as photosensitizers
Much attention is paid to the non-covalent modification of liposomes with cationic surfactants, which increases their stability, ability to overcome biological barriers, as well as ensure targeted drug delivery
Summary
One of the ways to improve the effectiveness of medical therapies is the use of drug delivery systems. E.g., metal oxides, gold and silica particles, fullerenes, quantum dots, etc., provide effective and versatile platform for the fabrication of drug delivery vehicles and diagnostic imaging agents [16,17,18] These materials demonstrate exclusive optical, magnetic and electric properties in combination with enhanced loading capacity, mechanical stability, easy fabrication, controlled size and/or pore characteristics and other beneficial features, which can be tailored through proper choice of synthetic and functionalization techniques. Based on the above analysis, two distinct families of nanocarriers, namely, lipid formulations and silicon-containing nanoparticles (Figure 1), as well as intermediary cerasomes, have been chosen with a focus on recent publications covering the drug encapsulation technique and emphasizing the aspects insufficiently highlighted elsewhere, e.g., development of hybrid formulations via non-covalent modification of nanocarriers aimed at the improving of their stability, targeting effects, multicentered drug loading and toxicity profile. Non-covalent modification has a significant advantage over covalent modification in that there are no time-consuming multi-step organic synthesis procedures
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