Recent advances in particulate anti-malarial drug delivery systems: A review

Malaria remains a tremendous health burden in tropical areas, causing a life-threatening disease and accounts for 1 to 2 million deaths round the globe yearly. Researchers have explored different novel approaches to deliver and improve the biopharmaceutical performance of drugs used in malaria chemotherapy. These novel drug delivery systems (NDDS) enhanced bioavailability of these drugs and also may offer controlled release of these drugs. The major aim of the NDDS is to improve the efficacy of these drugs, and at the same time to eliminate their toxicity. These NDDS include: micro/nanoparticulate DDS, emulsion based DDS, dendrimers and liposomes among others. The development of these particulate carriers as vehicles for the delivery of active compounds is a novel area of research that provides a new hope in malarial chemotherapy. The work presents various trends in malarial chemotherapy, as well as an exhaustive screening of different particulate drug delivery systems (PDDS) and the recent advances in the delivery of antimalarial drugs using the novel particulate drug delivery systems (NPDDS).