Multidisciplinary strategies to enhance therapeutic effects of flavonoids from Epimedii Folium: Integration of herbal medicine, enzyme engineering, and nanotechnology

In recent years, the development of nanoparticles has expanded into a broad range of clinical applications. Nanoparticles have been developed to overcome the limitations of free therapeutics and navigate biological barriers — systemic, microenvironmental and cellular — that are heterogeneous across patient populations and diseases. Overcoming this patient heterogeneity has also been accomplished through precision therapeutics, in which personalized interventions have enhanced therapeutic efficacy. However, nanoparticle development continues to focus on optimizing delivery platforms with a one-size-fits-all solution. As lipid-based, polymeric and inorganic nanoparticles are engineered in increasingly specified ways, they can begin to be optimized for drug delivery in a more personalized manner, entering the era of precision medicine. In this Review, we discuss advanced nanoparticle designs utilized in both non-personalized and precision applications that could be applied to improve precision therapies. We focus on advances in nanoparticle design that overcome heterogeneous barriers to delivery, arguing that intelligent nanoparticle design can improve efficacy in general delivery applications while enabling tailored designs for precision applications, thereby ultimately improving patient outcome overall.

Since their discovery in the 1960s, liposomes have been studied in depth, and they continue to constitute a field of intense research. Liposomes are valued for their biological and technological advantages, and are considered to be the most successful drug-carrier system known to date. Notable progress has been made, and several biomedical applications of liposomes are either in clinical trials, are about to be put on the market, or have already been approved for public use. In this review, we briefly analyze how the efficacy of liposomes depends on the nature of their components and their size, surface charge, and lipidic organization. Moreover, we discuss the influence of the physicochemical properties of liposomes on their interaction with cells, half-life, ability to enter tissues, and final fate in vivo. Finally, we describe some strategies developed to overcome limitations of the “first-generation” liposomes, and liposome-based drugs on the market and in clinical trials.