Abstract:

A review. Soft self-assembled lipidic systems with well-defined nanostructures have become increasingly important in the development of pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic delivery systems. They have key roles in overcoming the insufficiency of bioavailability and other obstacles in drug delivery systems, such as severe side effects and the toxicity of poorly water-sol. bioactive mols. In particular, self-assembled nanostructures of naturally occurring surfactant-like lipids represent an interesting family of nanocarriers. This family of biodegradable and biocompatible materials displays structures closely related to those obsd. in biol. membranes and enables the formation of efficient delivery systems. The optimal utilization of these nanostructured objects requires a full understanding of their physicochem. properties and detailed characterization of their structures. Their stability after administration is a key issue in the development of excipients with a good performance and a significant redn. of unwanted side effects. This chapter summarizes recent studies of the possibility of utilizing soft lipidic self-assembled systems as drug and food nanocarriers. The scope covers recent investigations that have attempted to shed light on the formation of delivery systems based on microemulsions, and different nanostructured aq. dispersions. It highlights also some recent advances in the characterization of these complex soft nanoobjects. The main focus is placed on the recent developments in the field of small-angle scattering methods, dynamic light scattering (DLS), electron microscopy (tilt-angle cryo-TEM, and cryo-FESEM), and NMR (NMR) techniques. [on SciFinder(R)]