Title:Nano-soldiers Ameliorate Silibinin Delivery: A Review Study
Volume: 17
Issue: 1
Author(s): Milad Ashrafizadeh, Zahra Ahmadi, Reza Mohammadinejad, Tahereh Farkhondeh and Saeed Samarghandian*
Affiliation:
- Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences, Neyshabur,Iran
Keywords:
Silibinin, Drug delivery, Bioavailability, Herbal medicine, Cancer therapy, Pharmacological effects.
Abstract: Flavonoids are a large group of naturally occurring compounds, which are of interest due to
their great pharmacological effects and health-promoting impacts. These properties have led to their
extensive application in a variety of pathological conditions, particularly cancer. Flavonoids are used in
large quantities in a human's daily diet and a high amount of flavonoids are found in the intestine after
oral usage. However, flavonoid concentrations in tissue/plasma are low because of their low bioavailability,
the leading to the low efficacy of flavonoids in different clinical disorders. For this reason,
nanotechnology application for delivering flavonoids to tumor sites has recently received significant
attention. Silibinin is a key member of flavonoids and a bioactive component of silymarin, which is
widely isolated from Silybum marianum. This plant-derived chemical has a number of valuable biological
and therapeutic activities such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, anti-tumor, hepatoprotective,
cardioprotective and anti-diabetic. These beneficial effects have been demonstrated in in
vivo and in vitro experiments. However, it seems that silibinin has a variety of limitations and poor
bioavailability is the most important factor restricting its wide application. Hence, there have been attempts
to improve the bioavailability of silibinin and it has been suggested that nano-soldiers are potential
candidates for this aim. In the present review, we describe the different drug delivery systems for
improving the bioavailability of silibinin.