Title:Engineered Site-specific Vesicular Systems for Colonic Delivery: Trends and Implications
Volume: 26
Issue: 42
Author(s): Honey Goel, Karan Razdan, Richu Singla, Sushama Talegaonkar, Rajneet Kaur Khurana, Ashok Kumar Tiwary, Vivek Ranjan Sinha and Kamalinder K. Singh*
Affiliation:
- School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, Preston,United Kingdom
Keywords:
Coated liposomes, colon drug delivery, colon specific liposomal systems (CSLS), active targeting, immunoliposomes,
nanoliposomes, phytochemicals.
Abstract: Steering drug-loaded, site-specific, coated lipid vesicles to the target receptor sites have the potential of
plummeting adverse effects and improving the pharmacological response in diverse pathologies of the large
bowel, especially the colon. Colonic delivery via oral route has its own challenges, often governed by several
glitches such as drug degradation or absorption in the upper GIT, instability of proteins/peptides due to high molecular
weight, and peptidase activity in the stomach. Consequently, colon-specific coated liposomal systems
(CSLS) offer a potential alternate for not only site-specificity, but protection from proteolytic activity, and prolonged
residence time for greater systemic bioavailability. On the other hand, liposomal delivery via the oral route
is also cumbersome owing to several barriers such as instability in GIT, difficulty in crossing membranes, and
issues related to production at the pilot scale. New advancements in the field of CSLS have successfully improved
the stability and permeability of liposomes for oral delivery via modulating the compositions of lipid bilayers,
adding polymers or ligands. Despite this ostensible propitiousness, no commercial oral CSLS has advanced from
bench to bedside for targeted delivery to the colon as yet. Nevertheless, CSLS has quite fascinated the manufacturers
owing to its potential industrial viability, simplistic and low-cost design. Hence, this review aims to decipher
the convolutions involved in the engineering process of industrially viable CSLS for colonic delivery.