Vesicular nanocarriers: An innovative targeted and sustained drug delivery system

Conventional drug delivery methods tend to deliver poor therapeutic effects owing to various constraints including low solubility, instability, rapid breakdown, and lack of site-specific target delivery. Conventional methods of dealing with these problems have involved salt formation, solubilization, and complexation. Among various novel drug delivery systems, vesicular drug delivery systems (VDDS) is a novel solution to these issues which entrap both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs in biocompatible and biodegradable vesicles that resemble biological membranes. This type of system includes liposomes, niosomes, transferosomes, ethosomes, cubosomes, bilosomes, aquasomes, phytosomes, sphingosomes, archaeosomes, cryptosomes, and many others, which improve solubility, bioavailability, permeability, stability, and controlled release, as well as prevent degradation of labile drugs. Ensuring that vesicle size, entrapment efficiency and drug release kinetics can be adjusted using preparation methods like thin-film hydration, solvent evaporation, sonication, high-pressure homogenization and microfluidization; thus customizing formulations to a particular therapeutic applications. Due to their capability to reside on injured or diseased targets and bypass biological barriers, vesicular carriers have demonstrated potential in many applications such as cancer therapy, transdermal, ocular delivery, oral vaccination and gene therapy. However, the latest developments in the area of nanotechnology, mixed vesicle development, stimuli-responsive vesicles, and the use of artificial intelligence to optimize formulations are opening the path to their application to clinical practice. In the future, as innovation proceeds, vesicular drug delivery systems will become a key platform in next-generation nanomedicine to achieve safe, effective, and targeted drug delivery. This review enlightens the different vesicular platforms and others, along with clear structural and functional differences in these vesicles, depending on specific therapeutic requirements.