Nanoprecipitation Process: From Particle Preparation to In Vivo Applications

Abstract

Nanoparticles have been widely prepared during the past decades. In fact, encapsulation could provide several advantages over conventional pharmaceutical forms (Miladi et al. in Int J Pharm 445(1–2):181–195, 2013; Campos et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 2(2):106–111, 2013; Grando et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 2(2):140–145, 2013; De Melo et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 2(2):146–152, 2013; Mazzaferro et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 1(2):210–217, 2012; Lira et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 2(2):123–129, 2013; Wang et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 1(2):192–200, 2012). Although, several techniques have been used for the preparation of submicron particles from preformed polymers, nanoprecipitation is regarded as a quite simple and reproducible technique that allows the obtaining of submicron-sized polymer particles. Additionally, many research works have focused on the enhancement of the reproducibility of the technique in order to render it more suitable for industrial applications. Nanoprecipitation is still widely used to prepare particulate carriers which are based on various polymers. Biomedical applications of such drug delivery systems are multiple (Rosset et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 1(2):218–224, 2012; Khan et al. in J Colloid Sci Biotechnol 1(1):122–128, 2012).