Phytoniosomes: An Emergent Strategy for Herbal Drug Delivery System

Abstract

Background and Objective: In the current era of advancement in the field of pharmaceutics, there is a growing interest in applying nanomedicine technology for active phytoconstituents and herbal extracts. This revolution in the area of herbal medicine has led to the growth of different technological approaches for delivering poorly soluble active herbal constituents or phytoconstituents, and herbal extract to enhance the safety, bioavailability, efficacy as well as receptor binding selectivity of the active entity. These nano-medicinal approaches have shown to be more effective and reliable delivery system for herbal drugs. Niosomes are one of the novel drug delivery system approaches that have shown promising results when employed in the delivery of many drugs including herbal drugs. The term ‘phytoniosomes’ as mentioned in various research papers are phyto/herbal drugs encapsulated in a non-ionic vesicular system. During the past decade, several research articles have been published on the development and characterization of phytoniosome nano-vesicle along with their in vivo studies as well as delivery approaches via different routes. Methods: During the writing of this document, the data was derived from existing original research papers gathered from a variety of sources such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, etc. Conclusion: This review discusses various aspects of phytoniosomes covering different areas such as techniques and methods involved in their preparation, various factors affecting their physicochemical properties while developing phytoniosomes, their characterization, and several applications and advantages.