Colloidosomes: An Inherent Rigid Vesicle with Controlled Drug Distribution

Abstract

Colloidosomes are hollow capsules whose shell is composed of closely packed uniform colloidal particles. To date, colloidosomes have been fabricated using colloidal assembly at liquid-liquid interfaces. This system also solves the problem of insolubility, instability, rapid degradation and widely used in specialized areas like protein delivery, gene delivery, targeting to brain, tumour targeting, etc. In the series of vascular systems, colloidosome is the advanced tool in drug delivery. Colloidosomes have a great, encapsulation efficacy with a wide control over size, permeability, mechanical strength and compatibility. Moreover, the release of larger encapsulated materials from such traditional colloidosomes relies on external triggers such as, changes in osmotic pressure or mechanical forces to crush or break open the capsule; this precludes precise control of the release response. These limitations highlight the need for a flexible technique to fabricate colloidosomes that enables both, control of the permeability to small species and a high degree of sensitivity to a release trigger. The types, properties, fabrication techniques, characterization and recent works on colloidosomes are compiled in this work.

Keywords: Colloidosomes, core materials, emulsion droplets, fused colloidal particles, microcapsules

Cite this Article

Chavda Vivek P, Soniwala Moinuddin M, Chavda Jayant R. Colloidosomes: An Inherent Rigid Vesicle with Controlled Drug Distribution. Research and Reviews: A Journal of Pharmaceutical Science. 2016; 7(3): 12–25p.