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1.2.2.3 Liposomes
ОглавлениеThe word liposome (Figure 1.2d) has been derived from the two Greek words: lipo (“fat”) and soma (“body”), and was described for the first time by British hematologist Alec Bangham in 1961, at the Babraham Institute, in Cambridge (Bangham and Horne 1964). Liposomes are among the group of organic nanomaterials which are comparatively small, spherical vesicles that are amphipathic (contains both hydrophilic and hydrophobic structures). Liposomes are generally composed of phospholipids and spontaneously formed when certain lipids are hydrated in an aqueous media (Singh et al. 2019). The unique structure of liposome (i.e. lipid bilayer[s] structure) facilitates the incorporation of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs, which helps to prevent the rapid decomposition of the incorporated drug and also to release the drug molecules at a specific targeted site (Lujan et al. 2019). Liposomes reported having several promising properties such as small size, lipid bilayer structure, surface charge, biocompatibility, biodegradability, low toxicity, site‐specific delivery, etc. Due to all these properties, liposomes have attracted a great deal of attention from researchers all over the world for their use as potential drug delivery systems in various diseases including cancer (El‐Hammadi and Arias 2019). Moreover, liposomes have been modified to develop some other phospholipid vesicles which selectively have their applications in the delivery of specific drugs or biomolecules (mostly for transdermal delivery). These vesicles mainly include transferosomes, niosomes, and ethosomes.