Liquid crystal nanoparticles for commercial drug delivery

Liquid crystals (LCs) are an intermediate state of matter that exists between conventional solids and liquids. They are vital to the existence of life as several critical components in living organisms such as cell wall and biochemical fluids are liquid crystalline in nature. Drug delivery based on LCs is a vast field of research. In recent years there has been a huge leap in interest into using LCs, particularly lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs), as nanoparticles (cubosomes and hexosomes) for drug delivery applications. Such nanoparticle-based drug delivery promise efficient, controlled and target selective release of drugs. This paper reviews the concepts and techniques involved in LLC-based drug delivery. The influence of physical properties of LCs on the drug carrier design and efficiency, key aspects of the methods used to identify, characterize and analyse lyotropic nanoparticles and the feasibility of production of nanoparticles for their widespread usage are discussed. The study suggests that LC-based nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize drug delivery industry, however a reliable method for production of nanoparticles on a large scale needs to be explored further.