Applications of Nanothechnology in Herbal Drugs

Herbal medicines have been widely used all over the world since ancient times and have been recognized by physicians and patients for their better therapeutic effects as they have lesser adverse effects as compared with modern medicines.

Phytotherapeutics need a scientific approach to deliver the components in a sustained manner to increase patient compliance and avoid repeated administration. This can be achieved by designing novel drug delivery systems (NDDS) for herbal constituents.

Nano-sized drug delivery systems of herbal drugs have a potential future for enhancing the activity and overcoming problems associated with plant medicines. Hence, integration of the nanocarriers as a NDDS in the traditional medicine system is essential to conflict more chronic diseases like asthma, diabetes, cancer, and others.

Nanotechnology is a field of applied science and technology which aims to develop devices and dosage forms in the range of 1 to 100 nm. The applications of nanotechnology for treatment, diagnosis, monitoring, and control of biological systems have recently been referred to as nanomedicine. The nanocarriers have been made of safe materials, including synthetic biodegradable polymers, lipids, and polysaccharides

ADVANTAGES OF NANOTECHNOLOGY

most of the herbal origin drugs possess insoluble character leading to lower bioavailability and increased systemic clearance requiring repeated administration or higher dose, which makes the drug as a poor candidate for therapeutic use.

In phyto-formulation research, developing nano dosage forms (Polymeric Nanoparticles, Liposomes, Proliposomes, Solid Lipid Nanoparticles [SLNs], Nanoemulsion, etc.) has large number of advantages for herbal drugs, including

• protection from toxicity
• enhancement of solubility and bioavailability
• enhancement of pharmacological activity
• improving tissue macrophages distribution
• enhancement of stability
• protection from physical and chemical degradation
• sustained delivery

NOVEL DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM FOR HERBAL REMEDIES:

NDDS is designed to overcome the drawbacks of the traditional herbal drug system due to its wide applications to mankind. Nanoparticle can be used to target the herbal medicines to individual organ which improves the selectivity, solubility, drug delivery, safety, effectiveness and reduces the frequent dose.

The nanoparticle size drug delivery enhances the entire surface area of the drugs therefore allocating quicker dissolution in the blood.Reduction in toxicity while maintaining therapeutic effects. àThe enhanced permeation and retention of nanoparticles can cross Blood Brain Barrier .Why is nano sized delivery system needed for herbal drugs.Nanosized herbal delivery system was selected to overcome the drawbacks of the traditionalherbal drug delivery systems because of the following reasons.

Nanoparticle can be used to target the herbal medicine to individual organ whichimproves the selectivity, drug delivery, effectiveness and safety and thereby reduces doseand increases patient compliance.

Nanoparticles can be utilized to increase the herbal drug solubility and help to localizethe drug in a specific site thus resulting in better efficacy.They appear to be able to deliver high concentrations of drugs to disease sites because oftheir unique size and high loading capacities.Deliveringthe drug in small particle size enhances the entire surface area of the drugstherefore allocating quicker dissolution in the blood.Shows EPR (enhanced permeation and retention) effect, i.e., enhanced permeation through the barriers because of the small size and retention due to poor lymphaticdrainage such as in tumor. Exhibits passive targeting to the disease site of action without the addition of anyparticular ligand moiety.

NANOPARTICLES FORMULATIONS AND THEIR PHARMACOLOGICAL ACTIONS

Nanosized drug delivery systems for herbal drugs can poten-tially enhance the biological activity and overcome problems associated with plant medicines. However, significant challenges remain for implementation of clinically viable therapies in this field.Trials of novel methods to control the interactions of nanomaterials with biological systems represent some of the current challenges to translating these technologies to therapies.New challenges in the development of nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems include: the feasibility of scale-up processes that bring innovative therapeutic techniques to the market quickly, and the pos-sibility of obtaining multifunctional systems to fulfill several biological and therapeutic requirements.

Some additional new challenges include probing the targeting efficiency of nanoparticles, and satisfying international standards for their toxicology and biocompatibility

CONCULSION

Herbal drugs have been recently getting more attention because of their potential to treat almost all diseases. However, several problems such as poor solubility, poor bioavailability,low oral absorption, instability and unpredictable toxicity of herbal medicines limit their use.In order to overcome such problems, nanoparticles can play a vital role. Hence, different nanoparticles show potential utilization to deliver herbal medicines with better therapy.

In present review, the systhesismethod of nanoparticles and characterization of nanoparticles are studied and plant and its parts or their product have been reported or utilized as anticancer, antioxidant, anti-anxiety, anti-malarial, liver and kidney tonic and also for cardiovascular diseases.These medicinal properties attributed by metabolites like savianolic acid B, triptolide, ginkolic acid and paclitaxol, etc. However, many herbal drugs possessed poor aqueous solubility, physical instability, low absorption, lower bioavailability and slow pharmacological actions.

To overcome the disadvantages, drug delivery systems that contain nanocarriers have been developed. Nano-coating herbal drug were produced by using various methods like homogenization technique, sequentinoal simplex optimization, solvent evaporation method and wet and dry precipitation technique .Because of their small size and high surface area to volume ratio, nanoparticles drug carriers improves pharmacokinetic and bio-distribution of therapeutic agent. Other than their site specific action they can bypass blood barrier, improve the solubility of hydrophobic compounds as well as increase their stability.