Ethosomes: A Tool for Transdermal Drug Delivery

Since skin offers an excellent barrier to molecular transport, as stratum corneum is the most formidable barrier to the passage of most of the drugs, except for highly lipophilic, low molecular weight drugs. Various attempts have been made for enhanced drug delivery into the body through the intact skin including using lipid vesicles like liposome, niosomes etc. Classic liposomes are of little or no value as carriers for transdermal drug delivery because they do not deeply penetrate the skin. One of the major advances in vesicle research is the finding that some specially designed vesicles possessed properties that allowed them to successfully deliver drugs in deeper layer of skin. Ethosome is one of the specially designed lipid carrier recently developed by Touitou et al, showing enhanced skin delivery. Ethosome are characterized by prolong physical stability with respect to liposomes.