Self-nano emulsifying drug delivery system: A versatile carrier for lipophilic drugs.

BACKGROUND: Lipid-based systems such as self-nano emulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDS) have resurged the eminence of nanoemulsions and offer many useful drug delivery opportunities. In the modern drug discovery era, there was a consistent increase in the number of poorly soluble new chemical entities which suffer from poor and erratic bioavailability problems. The oral route possesses some major disadvantages such as lack of constant drug levels in plasma, first-pass metabolism which results in poor bioavailability, so to address these problems, various lipid-based therapeutic systems are available from which (SNEDDS) have the promising tool for increasing the bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs.
METHODS: SNEDDS is the isotropic mixture of oils, surfactant, and co-surfactant having droplet size in the range of 100-200 nm, which spontaneously emulsifies when it contacts with aqueous media in Gastrointestinal (G.I) fluid. Various preparative methods are available for SNEDDS such as high-pressure homogenizer, Microfluidization, Sonication, Phase inversion, method. These methods show favorable benefits in drug delivery. SNEDDS possesses some disadvantages like precipitation of drug in G.I fluid or either drug will reach out in the capsule dosage form due to incompatibility issues, which will overcome by some more advanced techniques like supersaturate SNEDDS, which contains a precipitation inhibitor or Solid SNEDDS which will formulate either through spray drying or using a solid carrier.
CONCLUSION: The lipid-based nanocarrier (SNEDDS) plays a significant role in drug delivery, to overcome the poor solubility and oral bioavailability. This review highlights the elaborative aspects of the diverse advantages of SNEDDS based formulations. Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.