Abstract

LIPOSOMES: A NEW MECHANISM FOR DRUG DELIVERY

*Meghavi Patel

ABSTRACT

Liposomes are small spherical vesicles made up comprising a lipophilic tail and a hydrophilic head. Dr. Alec D. Bangham, a British hematologist, originally introduced liposomes. The structural unit of the liposome is represented by phospholipid; the second most important component is cholesterol, which works as a fluidity buffer. Because of biocompatibility, lack of toxicity, capacity to deliver therapeutic molecules that are both lipophilic and hydrophilic, ability to protect the medication compounds from deterioration, and assistance in crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier with them, liposomes have drawn a lot of interest as drug delivery vehicles. Liposomes are tiny unilamellar vesicles, multilamellar vesicles, multivesicular vesicles, oligolamellar vesicles, and giant vesicles. Different methods of liposome preparation had been described here like thin film method, ethanol injection method, ether injection method, reverse phase evaporation method, detergent removal method, double emulsion method, sonication, freeze-thawed method, and French cell method along with various evaluation parameters. Various applications of liposomes had been described here like in anticancer therapy, as a drug carrier, in dairy products, in cosmetics, protection against enzymatic degradation of drugs, etc. This paper describes a brief overview of liposomes along with classification, structure, materials used, mechanism, method of preparation, evaluation parameters, and applications.

Keywords: Liposome, drug delivery, phospholipid.