An updated review on niosomes: a promising drug carrier

Abstract

Nowadays, advancement in nanocarrier technology gain interest of researchers because it offered various advantages in term of safety and efficacy like enhanced delivery of therapeutics with diverse pharmacological effects, featuring improved targeting capabilities and minimized adverse effects over other carrier systems. Similarly, Niosomes proved as a promising and novel drug carrier. Niosomes are vesicular drug carrier approach which provides controlled and targeted drug delivery. It consist non-ionic surfactants, cholesterol or its derivatives and charged molecules and can be unilamellar, oligolamellar or multilamellar. Their distinctive attributes include the ability to encapsulate both hydrophilic and lipophilic components. This review article illustrates all the basic details of niosomes like structure of niosomes, types of niosomes, its merits and demerits, routes of administration, methods of preparation, factors affecting their formation, evaluation criteria for niosomes as well as their applications and existing marketed formulations.