Solid Lipid Nanoparticles: The Frontier in Drug Delivery.

Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) have emerged as a forefront drug delivery system with diverse potential applications in pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical research, nanomedicine and other allied branches of science. Recently, increasing attention has been focused on these SLNs as colloidal drug carriers for incorporating hydrophilic or lipophilic drugs. Proteins and antigens intended for therapeutic purposes can also be incorporated or adsorbed onto SLNs, and further administered by parenteral route or by alternative routes such as oral, nasal and pulmonary etc. Due to their unique size dependent properties SLNs offer possibility to develop new therapeutics. The ability to incorporate drugs into these nanocarriers offers a new prototype in drug delivery that could use for drug targeting. Hence SLNs hold great promise for reaching the goal of controlled and site specific drug delivery and hence attracted wide attention of researchers. Also the problems associated with conventional chemotherapy can be overcome by encapsulating them in SLNs. The present review focuses on SLNs brief introduction, utility in terms of their advantages, production methodology, characterization and applications and their possible remedies. Further investigation and research related to SLNs may open new vistas in nanotechnology and in therapy of multifaceted diseases.