Transferosomes: a Novel Approach for Transdermal Drug Delivery

Transdermal drug delivery system appears to be most promising delivery system due to their merits over conventional delivery systems. Recently, various strategies have been used to augment the transdermal delivery of bioactives. Mainly, they include iontophoresis, electrophoresis, sonophoresis, chemical permeation enhancers, microneedles, and vesicular system (liposomes, niosomes, elastic liposomes such as ethosomes and transfersomes). Among these strategies transferosomes appear promising. Transfersomes possess an infrastructure consisting of hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties together and as a result can accommodate drug molecules with wide range of solubility. A novel vesicular drug carrier system called transfersomes, which is composed of phospholipid, surfactant, and water for enhanced transdermal delivery. Transfersomes can deform and pass through narrow constriction (from 5 to 10 times less than their own diameter) without measurable loss.. The system can be characterized by in vitro for vesicle shape and size, entrapment efficiency, degree of deformability, number of vesicles per cubic mm. Flexibility of transferosomes membrane is achieved by mixing suitable surface active agents in the proper ratios. Transferosomes have beneficial advantages over other vesicular systems such as their high penetration power across skin, higher stability, systemic drug release possible and higher deformability than other vesicular systems such as niosomes, liposomes etc. They can act as a carrier for low as well as high molecular weight drugs e.g. analgesic, anesthetic, corticosteroids, sex hormone, anticancer, insulin, gap junction protein, and albumin.