Invasomes-novel Vesicular Carriers for Enhanced Skin Permeation

Invasomes are the liposomal vesicles embodying small amounts of ethanol and terpenes or terpene mixtures, which act as potential carriers with increased skin penetration. Invasomes have higher penetration rate through the skin as compared to liposomes and ethosomes. Invasomes provide a number of advantages including improving the drug’s efficacy, enhancing patient compliance and comfort. This article reviews various aspects of invasomes including their preparation, characterization, potential advantages in drug delivery. Enhanced delivery of drugs through the skin and cellular membranes by means of an invasomal carrier opens numerous challenges and opportunities for research and future development of novel improved therapies. SC.[6] Many approaches have been aimed to disrupt or weaken the highly organized intercellular lipids of SC such as chemical enhancers, iontophoresis, microneedles, vesicles, nanoparticles, etc.[7,8] Since, past two decades colloidal lipid aggregates (liposomes) were developed as vesicular drug carrier systems. Vesicles are used in dermal and transdermal drug delivery as they might:[9] a. Act as drug carriers to deliver entrapped drug molecules into or across the skin b. Act as penetration enhancers for the penetration of the individual lipid components into the SC and subsequently altering the intercellular lipid lamellae within this skin layer c. Serve as a depot for sustained release of dermally active compounds d. Serve as a rate limiting membrane barrier for the modulation of systemic absorption, hence providing a controlled transdermal delivery system. There are several new vesicle types, depending on the additives used for vesicle preparation. Such as niosomes, transferosomes, ethosomes, flexosomes, invasomes, vesosomes, ufasomes, and polymerosomes.[10] Description of these vesicles and drugs delivered by these vesicles as carriers is given in Table 1. In previous studies l iposomes (prepared from only phospholipids),[20,21] niosomes (prepared from surfactants and cholesterol)[22] has shown great potential as a drug delivery system. Parallel to this development, other classes of elastic vesicles without cholesterol were produced, which include transfersomes® (composed of phospholipids in combination with a surfactant),[23,24] ethosomes (ethanol being included into the vesicles to provide flexibility).[25,26] These elastic vesicles were more efficient in enhancing the transport of drugs than rigid vesicles.[27] Invasomes are novel vesicles incorporating terpenes with enhanced penetration compared to the conventional liposomes. Access this article online Website: www.sysrevpharm.org Quick Response Code: DOI: 10.4103/0975-8453.135837