An Overview of Transferosomal Technology

Ever since the invention of liposomes by Bangham in 1963, researchers have been fascinated by the vesicular carriers. Liposomes and niosomes have been used extensively by researchers for various routes such as oral and nasal. However, lately, it has been understood that traditional liposomes are not very significant when it comes to penetration. The use of nanovesicles in transdermal drug delivery systems has been enhanced exponentially ever since the discovery of ultra- deformable liposomes known as transfersomes or transferosomes. Transferosomes have numerous advantages, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, flexibility, and deformability, so that they can pass through narrow constrictions. They have good entrapment efficiency and can act as a depot to sustain the release of drugs. The methods of preparation include the rotary film evaporation method, reverse phase evaporation method, vortexing sonication method, ethanol injection method, and freeze-thaw method. Transfersomes are characterized by particle size, zeta potential, polydispersity index, surface morphology, and encapsulation efficiency. Transferosomes have been successfully exploited for the enhancement of efficacy of many drugs like Hydroquinone, Itraconazole, Ivabradine, lornoxicam, minoxidil etc., via transdermal and nasal routes. The technology is easy to scale up. Consequently, it can be inferred that transfersomes are the future of transdermal drug delivery systems.