Ethosomes: Enhanced delivery of drugs to and across the skin

Ethosomes are specially tailored vesicular carriers for enhanced delivery of active agents into the deep layers of the skin and across the skin. The proposed permeation enhancement mechanism suggests that ethanol has a fluidizing effect both on the phospholipid bilayers of the vesicle and on the SC lipid bilayers of the intercellular pathway in the skin. The soft vesicle penetrates through the disorganized SC lipids into the deep skin strata where it releases its contents. In vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies have shown the ability of this passive delivery system to efficiently enhance skin penetration of molecules with various physicochemical characteristics and structures without raising safety issues. This vesicular carrier is distinguished from other lipid nanocarriers by a number of important characteristics, such as vesicle’s bilayer fluidity, its mechanism of permeation enhancement (attributed to the entire system), simple mode of preparation, and lack of side effects.