Nanoprecipitation: Applications for Entrapping Active Molecules of Interest in Pharmaceutics

Abstract

Nanoprecipitation technique, also named solvent injection, spontaneous emulsi-fication, solvent displacement, solvent diffusion, interfacial deposition, mixing-induced nanoprecipitation, or flash nanoprecipitation, is recognized as a useful and versatile strategy for trapping active molecules on the submicron and nanoscale levels. Thus, these particles could be intended among others, for developing innovative pharmaceutical products bearing advantages as controlled drug release, target therapeutic performance, or improved stability and organoleptic properties. On this basis, this chapter offers readers a comprehensive revision of the state of the art in research on carriers to be used for pharmaceutical applications and developed by the nanoprecipitation method. In this sense, the starting materials, the particle characteristics, and the in vitro and in vivo performances of the most representative of these carriers, i.e., polymer, lipid, and hybrid particles have been analyzed in a comparative way searching for a general view of the obtained behaviors.