Formulation Considerations and Applications of Solid Lipid Nanoparticles

摘要

Nanoparticles are submicron-sized colloidal particles. These colloidal systems are dispersions of one phase within another and can vary in size from 1nm to 1|im. They are widely used throughout scientific research in numerous applications in electronic, optical, biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. In the pharmaceutical field, nanoparticles are widely used as drug delivery systems. As a drug delivery system, nanoparticles can be prepared using different biodegradable materials such as natural or synthetic polymers, metals or lipids [1]. In these nano-particulate drug delivery systems, the drug is either absorbed/ conjugated into its outer surface or encapsulated within its core [2]. Nanoparticles are usually separated into two classes: nanospheres and nanocapsules. Nanospheres can be described as a polymeric solid particle that incorporates a drug into its system by dissolving, entrapping, binding, encapsulating, or absorbing it to its matrix [2]. Likewise, nanocapsules are also composed of polymers but instead of trapping the drug within, the nanocapsule form a polymer membrane surrounding the drug.