Could New Drug Delivery Systems Affect the Pharmaceutical Effect of Calendula?

Abstract

Calendula genus is a group of herbs used in the treatment of some human diseases and disorders, such as wounds, inflammations, and cancers. Calendula was used as medicine from humans’ earliest ages to the present days; from using the plant itself as herbal tea in the renaissance to using the calendulas as tablets and other drug formations. However, these herbal treatments have some disadvantages, including unwanted side effects in some organs of the body, toxicities, and fast-ending therapeutic effects. Therefore, researchers have made special attention to overcome these disadvantages via drug delivery formulations and using recent drug delivery systems such as nanotubes, liposomes, carrier polymers, lipid-based nanoparticles (NPs) (e.g., nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) or solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs)), fullerenes and so forth. These carriers and delivery systems could help improve the marigold extract (ME) and oil efficacy, leading to a decrease in toxicity and other side effects. Carriers loaded with ME can be an effective formulation design in the treatment of many diseases in humans such as cancer especially if a suitable carrier is chosen in the formulation step like NLCs or metal nanocarriers. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive review of various drug delivery technologies on Calendula and show how effective it is in improving therapeutic effect by reviewing some of the newest and best research articles and presenting their data in summary form.