eChapter Name: Introduction of Liposomal Drug Delivery
9789372190540
eBook Name: LIPOSOMAL DRUG DELIVERY: A NOVEL APPROACH FOR THERAPEUTICS
Introduction
Liposomes are bubble-like structures made up of (phospho)lipids that form on their own and surround an area of water in the middle with two or more overlapping layers of lipids. Liposomes are between 30 and micrometers in size and are made up of two phospholipid layers that are 4-5 nm thick. British scientists Alec Bangham and his colleagues at Babraham Cambridge were the first to describe the structure of liposomes in 1964 (Kozubek et al., 2000; Samad et al., 2007). This was in the middle of the 1960s and was a big step forward for the field of liposomology. Following this, liposomes have been studied in great detail because they can carry imaging agents, proteins, nucleic acids, and small chemicals. Many ways of giving medicine have been created to make treatment more effective and help patients stick with it. These include parenteral, pulmonary, oral, transdermal, ophthalmic, and nasal methods. In addition, liposomes are used a lot in the food and beauty industries (Maurer et al., 2001). Liposomes are very good at delivering drugs because they keep the parts inside from breaking down naturally, increase the half-life of the drug, manage the release of drug molecules, and are very safe and compatible with living things. Liposomes can improve therapeutic benefits by passively or actively targeting to deliver their payload to the affected area. This raises the maximum dose that can be tolerated, lowers the risk of systemic side effects, and improves treatment results. When compared to normal tissue, which has strong links between endothelial cells, abnormal tissues like solid tumors or inflammatory sites have more permeable capillaries (Szoka, 2019; Allen and Cullis, 2013; Fielding, 1991).
The enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect is when liposomes can quietly gather and stay in damaged tissues by passing through the broken neovasculature. When the liposome interacts with certain molecules and receptors on the surface of tumor cells, this is called active targeting (Saraf et al., 2020). Some receptors, like folic acid, integrin, CD44, CD13, prostate-specific membrane antigen, vascular endothelial growth factor, and epidermal growth factor, may be overexpressed in tumor cells. Certain ligands could be used to change the surface of liposomes, as shown by the receptors. Antibodies, nucleic acids, protein peptides, iNGR, small molecules like folic acid, and carbohydrates are some of these ligands. Besides being used for specific medicines, liposomes are also a great way to get drugs to people who need them. However, liposomes have not yet reached their full potential because there are only 14 different types of liposomal goods on the market. We have learned more about commercial liposomal products that have been approved by both the FDA and the EMA through this research. The materials used in commercial goods and the ways they are made are both carefully thought out (Nekkanti and Kalepu, 2015; Olusanya et al., 2018).