Nanosponge: Applications in Controlled Drug Delivery

Shahla Parveen, Sana Farooqui, Usama Ahmad

Faculty of Pharmacy, Integral University, Lucknow, India

Nanosponges are one of the emerging technologies in the field of nano science. It serves as an effective targeted drug delivery system. These are tiny sponges having size of approximately a virus, with an average diameter below 1μm that can be filled with a wide variety of drugs. The sponge acts as a three-dimensional network or scaffold, which consist of the back bone, known as long-length polyester. Filling them with a “drug” and attaching special chemical “linker”. The nanosponges are solid in nature and can be formulated as oral, parenteral, topical or inhalational dosage forms. They circulate throughout the body and stick to the specific body site and release the drug in a controlled manner and have an enormous impact on the health care system. Owing to their small size and porous nature they can bind poorly-soluble drugs within their matrix and improve their bioavailability. These nanosponges have definite advantages in drug delivery system because of its aqueous solubility, high stability, high carrier capacity and feasibility of incorporation of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs with lesser side-effects. These advantages make nanosponge a special agent for delivery of medicaments to their desired site of action.