Anti-cancer drugs targeting using nanocarrier niosomes-a review

摘要

In the last few decades numbers of review and research articles have been published on niosomes. This shows the relevant interest of academias & researchers in niosomes because of the advantages sponsored by them over other colloidal drug delivery systems. Niosomes formation occurs when non-ionic surfactant vesicles assemble themselves. Various antineoplastic agents are used in chemotherapy, but they have some drawbacks that these agents cause cell death in normal tissues as well. There are two approaches to overcome this limitation. First, to modify the structure of existing drugs, but this will not possible because it changes the properties of drugs. Second, the development of nano-carriers like liposomes, dendrimers, nanoparticles, niosomes et al. Among all, niosomes (non-ionic surfactant vesicles) have more advantages besides all nano-carriers. Drugs either hydrophilic in nature or hydrophobic in nature, both can be incorporated in niosomes. And by embedding specific ligands over vesicular surface enables us to target the drug to specific cancer cells.