RESEARCH ARTICLE


Lovastatin Nanoparticle Synthesis and Characterization for Better Drug Delivery



A. Seenivasan1, Tapobrata Panda*, 1, Thomas Theodore2
1 Biochemical Engineering Laboratory (MSB 140A and MSB 235A), Department of Chemical Engineering
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai-600 036, Tamil Nadu, India


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Creative Commons License
© 2011 Seenivasan et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Biochemical Engineering Laboratory (MSB 140A and MSB 235A), Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, Tamil Nadu, India; Tel: +91-9840708563; E-mail: panda@iitm.ac.in


Abstract

Nano drug delivery system is the latest technology employed in various medicinal applications. This technology can be adapted to the conventional drug administration due to its site-specific targeting phenomena. The oral lipophilic drug administration has its drawbacks due to poor solubility and bioavailability. Lipid-based carrier systems are now widely popular due to improved efficiency, especially for lovastatin delivery. Lovastatin is an important drug which arrests the rate-limiting step of the cholesterol cascade. This drug has short half-lives, poor oral-administered bioavailability, poor solubility, and is rapidly metabolizable. Based on the composition, the drug delivery carriers are classified into solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), lipid emulsions (LEs), and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs). Among them, NLCs are a smarter generation of drug delivery carriers for lovastatin. The selection of various lipid systems and their formulation are discussed in this paper. Moreover, the characterization of these carrier systems to achieve the optimal characteristic features is discussed in a concise manner.

Keywords: Lovastatin, nanoparticles, solid lipid nanoparticles, lipid emulsions, nano-structured lipid carriers.