Nanocarrier Systems with the Use of Physical Enhancers

At present, nanotechnology has acquired great importance. One of the fields where nanotechnology has been used with great success is medicine. This has allowed the emergence of a branch of nanotechnology called nanomedicine. Nanomedicine has been used by all known routes of administration (oral, intravenous, transdermal, etc.). Topical/transdermal route is one of the most used routes to administer formulated drugs in nanocarrier systems (nanoparticles, liposomes, dendrimer, transfersomes, nanoemulsion, etc.) in combination with the use of physical enhancers (microneedles, iontophoresis, sonophoresis, etc.). This route has great potential to deliver drugs, but the stratum corneum, which is the most external layer of the skin, confers properties of permeability to this organ.

In order to modify the skin barrier properties and use the skin as a route to administer drugs into the body, some interesting strategies have been developed in last decades, such as the use of chemical and physical enhancers and even the combination of these enhancers with nanocarrier systems. For this reason, this chapter mainly emphasizes the applications of the 3 main physical enhancers (ultrasound, iontophoresis and microneedles) with nanocarriers for administering drugs by topical/transdermal routes, where they have been more widely used.

Keywords: Nanocarriers, Physical enhancers, Transdermal drug delivery.