Abstract

ETHOSOMES: A NOVEL APPROACH TO DRUG

Dhiraj More*, Ajay More, Gajanan Mapari, Assistant Professor: Priyanka

Abstract

The skin is the largest and most easily accessible organ of the body; it serves as a potential route of drug administration for systemic effects. However, the outer layer of the skin, the stratum corneum, represents the most resistible barrier to drug penetration across the skin, which limits the trans-dermal bioavailability of drugs. Therefore, special carriers are required to combat the natural skin barrier to deliver drug molecules with different physicochemical properties to the systemic circulation.[1] Trans-dermal drug-delivery systems offer many advantages, such as avoidance of first- pass metabolism by the liver, controlled delivery of drugs, reduced dosing frequency, and improved patient compliance, as they are noninvasive and can be self administered. The first Trans- dermal patch containing scopolamine for the treatment of motion sickness was approved in the US in 1979.[1,2,3] A new era of research in this field was opened with the use of liposomes for the topicaldelivery of triamcinolone, and since then a wide range of novel lipid-based vesicular systems have been developed. Deformable or elastic liposomes, which are currently known as Transfersomes, were introduced by Cevc and Blume in 1924 and followed by the innovative work of Touitou et al, which led to the discovery of a novel lipid vesicular system called Ethosomes.[2] Ethosomal systems differ from liposomes because they contain relatively high concentrations of ethanol, in addition to phospholipids and water. New generations of ethosomal systems have been introduced since then by adding other compounds to the basic Ethosomal formula in an attempt to enhance vesicular characteristics and skin permeation. However, to date, there has been no clear distinction among the classical Ethosomes and their newer generations.[1]

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