Building blocks to design liposomal delivery systems

Abstract

The flexibility of liposomal carriers does not just simply rely on their capability to encapsulate various types of therapeutic substances, but also on the large array of components used for designing liposome-based nanoformulations. Each of their components plays a very specific role in the formulation and can be easily replaced whenever a different therapeutic effect is desired. It is tempting to describe this by an analogy to Lego blocks, since a whole set of structures, differing in their features, can be designed using a certain pool of blocks. In this review, we focus on different design strategies, where a broad variety of liposomal components facilitates the attainment of straightforward control over targeting and drug release, which leads to the design of the most promising systems for drug delivery. The key aspects of this block-based architecture became evident after its implementation in our recent works on liposomal carriers of antisense oligonucleotides and statins, which are described in the last chapter of this review.