Adapting liposomes for oral drug delivery

Liposomes mimic natural cell membranes and have long been investigated as drug carriers due to excellent entrapment capacity, biocompatibility and safety. Despite the success of parenteral liposomes, oral delivery of liposomes is impeded by various barriers such as instability in the gastrointestinal tract, difficulties in crossing biomembranes, and mass production problems. By modulating the compositions of the lipid bilayers and adding polymers or ligands, both the stability and permeability of liposomes can be greatly improved for oral drug delivery. This review provides an overview of the challenges and current approaches toward the oral delivery of liposomes. (C) 2019 Chinese Pharmaceutical Association and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)