:
Diabetes mellitus greatly affects the quality of life of patients and has a
worldwide prevalence. Insulin is the most commonly used drug to treat diabetic patients
and is usually administered through the subcutaneous route. However, this route of
administration is ineffective due to the low concentration of insulin at the site of action.
This route of administration causes discomfort to the patient and increases the risk of
infection due to skin barrier disturbance caused by the needle. The oral administration of
insulin has been proposed to surpass the disadvantages of subcutaneous
administration. In this review, we give an overview of the strategies to deliver insulin by
the oral route, from insulin conjugation to encapsulation into nanoparticles. These
strategies are still under development to attain efficacy and effectiveness that are
expected to be achieved in the near future.
Transfersomes have been highlighted as an interesting nanotechnology-based approach to facilitate the skin delivery of bioactive compounds. Nevertheless, the properties of these nanosystems still need to be improved to enable knowledge transfer to the pharmaceutical industry and the development of more efficacious topical medicines. Quality-by-design strategies, such as Box–Behnken factorial design (BBD), are in line with the current need to use sustainable processes to develop new formulations. Thus, this work aimed at optimizing the physicochemical properties of transfersomes for cutaneous applications, by applying a BBD strategy to incorporate mixed edge activators with opposing hydrophilic–lipophilic balance (HLB). Tween® 80 and Span® 80 were used as edge activators and ibuprofen sodium salt (IBU) was selected as the model drug. After the initial screening of the IBU solubility in aqueous media, a BBD protocol was implemented, and the optimized formulation displayed appropriate physicochemical properties for skin delivery. By comparing the optimized transfersomes to equivalent liposomes, the incorporation of mixed edge activators was found to be beneficial to upgrade the storage stability of the nanosystems. Furthermore, their cytocompatibility was shown by cell viability studies using 3D HaCaT cultures. Altogether, the data herein bode well for future advances in the use of mixed edge activators in transfersomes for the management of skin conditions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.