Niosomes as a Novel Pharmaceutical Carrier: Structure, Classification and Preparation Methods

Document Type : Mini-reviews

Author

pharmaceutics, faculty of pharmacy, Sinai university, Ismailia, Egypt.

Abstract

Niosomes are non-ionic surfactant vesicles obtained by a hydrating mixture of cholesterol and nonionic surfactants. It can be used as a carrier of an amphiphilic and lipophilic drugs. In the niosomes drug delivery system, the medication is encapsulated in a vesicle. Niosomes are biodegradable, relatively nontoxic, more stable and inexpensive when compared to liposomes. The unilamellar niosomes vesicles are further divided into small unilamellar vesicles (SUV) and large unilamellar vesicles (LUV) whose particle size ranges between 10 – 100 & 100 – 250 nm, respectively. However, multilamellar vesicles (MLV) have vesicles that range in size from 100 to 1000 nm. This article presents an overview of the techniques of preparation of niosome, types of niosomes and characterisation. Also, niosomes have great drug delivery potential for targeted delivery of anti-cancer, anti-infective agents. The drug delivery potential of niosome can enhance by using novel drug delivery concepts like proniosomes, discomes and aspasome. Moreover, niosomes have many advantages over others nanoparticles system, we mention this advantages in this article.

Keywords