Transfersomes — A Nanoscience in Transdermal Drug Delivery and Its Clinical Advancements

Abstract

The convenient nanotransdermal delivery system is always likely to have some ideal and unique characteristics, predominantly for safety, desired actions, clinical efficacy, enriched with a therapeutic index with minimal adverse occurrence. One of the most challenging tasks for the formulators is to transfer the medicament, especially macromolecules, through the skin. Some of the ways to achieve this is the use of a painful needle or some other methods which also have economical constraints. A new technology has been developed, that is ultradeformable liposomes, also called as transfersomes. These are an elastic type of lipid vesicle aggregates capable of delivering wide range of active moieties including various biomolecules. It can be manufactured by evaporation, vortexing, reverse-phase evaporation, ethanol injection or freeze-thaw methods, where phospholipids and edge activators are the major ingredients that contribute the main role in their unique mechanism of permeation through less permeable stratum corneum. This review mainly focuses on the clinical trial studies and patents accessible on transfersomal products worldwide, highlights the recent work on transfersomes with various therapeutic agents. An effort to explain the deeper penetration of transfersomes across the epidermis layer by its pharmacokinetics and dynamic properties has been taken.

RETRACTED: Application of Nanopharmaceutics for Flibanserin Brain Delivery Augmentation Via the Nasal Route

“…The edge activators are usually a single-chain surfactant which enhances the squeezing and penetration of the vesicles through the mucosal barrier through destabilization of the lipid bilayers. The commonly used edge activators include sodium deoxycholate, sodium cholate, Tween, and Span [11][12][13]. Intranasal administration of TRFs has been previously reported to enhance bioavailability of several drugs [14][15][16].…”

Lipid-based nanoparticles for psoriasis treatment: a review on conventional treatments, recent works, and future prospects

“…210 5.3.3 Transfersomes. Transfersomes (also known as ultradeformable liposomes or elastic liposomes), 222,223 was designed by Cevc and Blume in 1992. 224,225 The main components of transfersomes are phospholipids (similar to liposomes) and edge activators (EA), a single chain surfactant that is also a membrane-soening agent (e.g., Tween 80, Span 80, and sodium cholate).…”

Transfersome as Topical Drug Delivery: Formulation and Characterization

“…The medication or dynamic substance is included in an natural dissolvable or water depending on its dissolvability (Piumitali, Neeraj, and Jyotivardhan 2020). Vesicle size can be diminished by sonication to deliver a little vesicle size (Garg and Jain 2022).…”

“…Place a drop of uranyl acetate solution on the grid and allow it to dry. At this point, the samples were examined by TEM (Piumitali et al 2020). TEM was used to determine the exact shape and morphology of the optimized transfersome suspension using a CM 120 Bio Twin TEM.…”