Potential of Novel Drug Delivery Systems for Herbal Drugs

Abstract:

Recently the use of herbal medicines has been increased all over the world due to their miraculous therapeutic effects and fewer adverse effects as compared to the modern medicines. However, delivery of herbal drugs also requires modifications with the purpose to achieve sustained release, to increase patient compliance etc. Previously herbal drugs could not attract scientists towards the development of novel drug delivery systems due to processing, standardising, extracting and identification difficulties. But now days with the advancement in the technology, novel drug delivery systems opens the door towards the development of herbal drug delivery systems. Novel drug delivery technologies have gained the importance to achieve modified delivery of herbal drugs thereby increasing the therapeutic value as well as reducing toxicity. For last one decade many novel carriers such as liposomes, nanoparticles, phytosomes and implants have been reported for successful modified delivery of various herbal drugs e.g. curcumin, quercetin, silybin, ginkgo etc. The objective of this review article is to summarize various novel drug delivery technologies which have been developed for delivery of herbal drugs, to achieve better therapeutic response.

Key words: Phytosome, polymeric micelles, ethosomes, curcumin, nanoparticles, novel carriers