DEVELOPMENT AND CHRACTERIZATION OF SELF ASSEMBELED NANOPARTICLES: A REVIEW

Various types of lipid based vesicular systems have been developed in controlled and targeted drug delivery. Self assembled nanoparticles (SAN) has advantages over traditional colloidal vesicular systems and also avoids some of their major disadvantages. SAN made of solid lipids are submicron colloidal carriers (50-1000nm). These consist of a solid hydrophobic core having a monolayer of phospholipid coating. The solid core contains drug dissolved or dispersed in the solid high melting fat matrix. The hydrophobic chains of phospholipids are embedded in the fat matrix. The outstanding characteristic of SAN is that they are nearly or wholly composed of ampiphillic prodrug. Serious drawbacks of the drugs could be effectively circumvented by covalent linkage of the drug to fatty acids. These lipidic prodrugs, if provided with some surface active property, tend to form supramolecular assemblages in aqueous media.  They provide an efficient method for delivery of drugs directly to the targeted site, leading to reduction of drug toxicity with no adverse effects and also reduces the cost of therapy by  imparting better  biopharmaceutical properties to the drug, resulting in improved bioavailability, especially in case of poorly soluble drugs. This articles reflects the various types of drug carrier systems and various method of preparation of self assembeled nanoparticles and also characterized the SAN for different attributes.