Implementing Nanovesicles for Boosting the Skin Permeation of Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs

The consumption of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have increased lately around the world, as they are considered essential and popular drugs for effective reduction of pain and inflammation. They have analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory activities; also, it was reported recently that they protect against various critical disorders like heart attacks and cancer. However, oral use of NSAIDs may cause several pulmonary, gastrointestinal, hepatic, cardiovascular, cerebral, and renal complications. Therefore, topical NSAIDs were recommended as a substitute to oral NSAIDs for the treatment of inflammation and pain. Still, the skin permeation of NSAIDs is considered a challenge, as the skin have an effective barrier function. Therefore, this review investigates various advanced vesicular nanocarriers and their applications through the skin, to augment the topical delivery of NSAIDs through stratum corneum over the conventional systems, enhance their effectiveness, and reduce the unwanted side effects. These innovative systems can manage bioavailability, solubility, stability, safety, and efficacy issues present in conventional systems.

Transethosomes: A Promising Challenge for Topical Delivery Short Title: Transethosomes for Topical Delivery

Skin provides an excellent barrier to molecular transport, as the stratum corneum is the most formidable barrier to the passage of most pharmaceuticals. Various attempts have been made to improve drug administration into the body through intact skin. Though very few routes are as attractive as the topical route, drug transport through the skin is challenging. To overcome the challenges, researchers have found a system in which the drug is encapsulated into the vesicle, penetrating deeper into the skin to hit the target site. Vesicular systems like transethosome, an ultra- deformable vesicle (UDV), tend to accumulate in the skin layers. Since transethosomes have small particle size and can easily alter the shape of vesicles compared to other vesicular systems, they can penetrate through the layers of skin. Hence, the drug encapsulated into transethosomes can easily reach the target site. Transethosomes consist of ethanol and phospholipids along with an edge activator. Ethanol and edge activator help to enhance the skin permeation of transethosomes. Various methods of preparation of transethosomes, comparison of transethosomes with other lipid vesicles, characterization of transethosomes, and application of transethosomes have been covered in this review. Transethosomes can deliver a different variety of drugs, such as anticancer, corticosteroids, proteins and peptides, analgesics.

Allylamines, Benzylamines, and Fungal Cell Permeability: A Review of Mechanistic Effects and Usefulness against Fungal Pathogens

Allylamines, naftifine and terbinafine, and the benzylamine, butenafine, are antifungal agents with activity on the fungal cell membrane. These synthetic compounds specifically inhibit squalene epoxidase, a key enzyme in fungal sterol biosynthesis. This results in a deficiency in ergosterol, a major fungal membrane sterol that regulates membrane fluidity, biogenesis, and functions, and whose damage results in increased membrane permeability and leakage of cellular components, ultimately leading to fungal cell death. With the fungal cell membrane being predominantly made up of lipids including sterols, these lipids have a vital role in the pathogenesis of fungal infections and the identification of improved therapies. This review will focus on the fungal cell membrane structure, activity of allylamines and benzylamines, and the mechanistic damage they cause to the membrane. Furthermore, pharmaceutical preparations and clinical uses of these drugs, mainly in dermatophyte infections, will be reviewed.

Callophycin A loaded chitosan and spicules based nanocomposites as an alternative strategy to overcome vaginal candidiasis

The present study aimed to understand the killing effects of seaweed derived metabolite Callophycin A (Cal A). In vitro studies confirmed that the beneficial effects of Cal A on the viability of C. albicans. To enhance the biological activity, we used to demonstrated that chitosan and spicules as a drug carrier. The Callophycin A loading was confirmed by spectral variation of FT-IR and morphological variation by SEM. Moreover, around 65% and 38% of Cal A was successfully loaded in chitosan and spicules respectively. Further, VVC induced animal model experiments confirmed that the candidicidal activity of 1% clotrimazole, Cal A, Cal@Chi and Cal@Spi. After 6 days of treatment Cal@Chi produces a significant reduction in the fungal burden of vaginal lavage. The histo-morphological alterations also evidenced that the protective role of Cal@Chi in VVC model. The present investigations are known to be the first and foremost study to discriminate the potentiality of Cal A composites. Cal A loaded chitosan nanoparticles could be used as an alternative strategy for the development of the novel marine natural product based topical applications.

Vesicular nanocarrier based treatment of skin fungal infections: Potential and emerging trends in nanoscale pharmacotherapy

Occurrence of skin fungal infections is increasing nowadays and their presence is more prominent in patients suffering from immunocompromised diseases like AIDS. Skin fungal infections are a major cause of visits by patients to dermatology clinics. Although, a large number of antifungal agents are available for treatment of skin fungal infections, but, their toxic profile and physicochemical characteristics reduce therapeutic outcome. When these antifungal agents are delivered topically using conventional formulations like creams and gels, they may cause various side effects like redness, burning, and swelling at the site of application. Therefore, various vesicular formulations (phospholipid based or non phospholipid based) have been explored by pharmaceutical scientists to treat skin fungal infections topically. Vesicular formulation explored for the purpose are liposomes, ethosomes, transfersomes, transethosomes, niosomes, spanlastics, oleic acid vesicles, and nanoparticles. These formulations show various advantages like bioavailability enhancement of bioactives, high skin permeation power, no side effects at application site, dosing frequency reduction, and sustained drug release. Therefore, in the present article, we have discussed about the utility of various vesicular nanocarrier systems to treat skin fungal infections.

Effect of chitosan coating on microemulsion for effective dermal clotrimazole delivery

Clotrimazole (CTZ) is a broad spectrum antimycotic agent known to be very effective locally for the treatment of fungal skin infections. The aim of this study was to study the effect of chitosan-coated microemulsion (CME) for topical delivery of CTZ and also evaluate its in vitro antifungal efficacy, ex vivo permeation and retention ability on the skin surface. The pseudo-ternary phase diagrams were developed using clove oil as oil phase, Tween 80 and propylene glycol as surfactant and co-surfactant, respectively, and distilled water as aqueous phase. CME was prepared by the drop wise addition of chitosan solution to the optimized microemulsion. Physicochemical parameters (globule size, zeta potential, drug content, viscosity and pH) and in vitro release of CME were studied. The in vitro antifungal efficacy of CME and ME was studied by cup-plate method against Candida albicans. Ex vivo drug permeation study was also carried out in a modified diffusion cell, using rat skin. The developed CME displayed an average globule size less than 50 nm and a positive surface charge, acceptable physico-chemical behavior, and exhibited sustained drug release in in vitro study. In in vitro anti-fungal study, CME showed greater values of zone of inhibition as compared to ME due to its prolonged action as well as fungistatic nature of chitosan. In ex vivo study, CME showed better retention and sustained permeation property than ME due to the mucoadhesive property of chitosan. These results suggest that positively charged CMEs could be used as novel topical formulation for its ability to retain on the skin and its ability to sustain the release of the drug.

A study on the effect of inorganic salts in transungual drug delivery of terbinafine

Objectives

The poor success rate of topical therapy in nail disorders is mainly because of the low permeability of keratinized nail plates. This can be overcome by utilizing potent perungual drug penetration enhancers that facilitate the drug permeation across the nail plate. This study evaluated the efficacy of inorganic salts in enhancing the trans-nail permeation using a model potent antifungal agent, terbinafine hydrochloride.

Methods

Permeation studies were carried out across human cadaver nail in a Franz diffusion cell using terbinafine solution (1 mg/ml; pH 3). Preliminary studies were carried out to assess the effect of salts (0.5 m) on the terbinafine permeation into and through the nail. Further, the influence of salt concentration (0.25–3 m) on permeation, the mechanism for the enhancement and the suitability of developing a formulation were also studied.

Key findings

Terbinafine permeation (3–5 fold) through the nail and drug load (4–7 fold) in the nail were enhanced significantly when salts were used at 0.5 m concentration. Increase in salt concentration up to 1 m increased the permeation, which decreased with further increase in salt concentration (>1 m). Mechanistic studies revealed that the enhanced permeation by salts was mainly due to their ability to increase the nail hydration and also to increase the thermodynamic activity of the drug. The cumulative amount of terbinafine permeated at 24 h from the formulated gel (9.70 ± 0.93 μg/cm2) was comparable with that of a solution (11.45 ± 1.62 μg/cm2).

Conclusions

Given the promising results from the permeation and drug load studies, it was concluded that inorganic salts could be used as potent transungual permeation enhancers.