title: Pharmaceutical and biomedical applications of lipid-based nanocarriers.
abstract: Increasing attention is being given to lipid nanocarriers (LNs) as drug delivery systems, due to the advantages offered of a higher biocompatibility and lower toxicity compared with polymeric nanoparticles. Many administration routes are being investigated for LNs, including topical, oral and parenteral ones. LNs are also proposed for specific applications such as cancer treatment, gene therapy, diagnosis and medical devices production. However, the high number of published research articles does not match an equal amount of patents. A recent Review of ours, published in Pharmaceutical Patent Analyst, reported the patents proposing novel methods for the production of LNs. This review work discusses recent patents, filed in 2007-2013 and dealing with the industrial applications of lipid-based nanocarriers for the vectorization of therapeutically relevant molecules, as well as biotech products such as proteins, gene material and vaccines, in the pharmaceutical, diagnostic and biomedical areas.
authors.affiliation: Section of Pharmaceutical Technology, Department of Drug Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Carbone
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leonardi
authors.forename: Sarha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cupri
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Puglisi
authors.forename: Rosario
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pignatello
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004337:Drug Carriers; D006801:Humans; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D036103:Nanotechnology; D010330:Patents as Topic
chemical_list: D004337:Drug Carriers; D008055:Lipids