Novel approaches to lipid based drug delivery

Lipid based drug delivery is hardly new; however, it is experiencing a renaissance due to new applications, such as gene therapy, new methods of enhancing vesicle circulation in the bloodstream by steric stabilization, and novel self-assembly approaches to more complex structures. Interfacing electronic materials with lipids and proteins is also showing promise with possible applications toward combinatorial chemistry, biosensors, and protein separations. What appears necessary in all of these endeavors is a better appreciation of lipid phase behavior and its modifications due to the proteins, polymers and ions, and how these interactions can be best controlled to provide an optimal microstructure, combined with a careful understanding of the biomedical application to determine just what that optimal microstructure might be.