Towards improved therapies using nanopharmaceuticals: recent patents on pharmaceutical nanoformulations.

Pharmaceutical formulations that contain nanosized drugs are perceived as "Nanopharmaceuticals" and offer significant benefit for the patient compared to the conventional formulated drugs. There are several advantages of nanoparticular drug formulations such as enhanced solubility and dissolution rate, enhanced oral bioavailability, improved dose proportionality, reduced food effects, suitability for administration by all routes and possibility of sterile filtration due to decreased particle size range. Several nanopharmaceuticals are successfully marketed. Different patented techniques are commercialized to prepare nanopharmaceuticals such as milling, homogenization and precipitation. The focus of the underlying review is to give an overview of those technologies for nanosizing active pharmaceutical ingredients and recently published patents in the field of nanosized pharmaceutics.