Solid lipid-based nanocarriers as efficient targeted drug and gene delivery systems

• Solid lipid-based nanocarriers hold great capacity as targeted delivery systems.
• These systems are promising candidate in the development of targeted drug delivery.
• These systems have capacity for combined drug and gene co-delivery.

Most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients are often prone to display low bioavailability, biological degradation and inadvertent intrinsic side effects. To circumvent such obstacles, the expansion of efficient and novel drug carrier system is of increasing importance in terms of their efficient applicability through different administration routes such as dermal, oral, topical, parenteral and pulmonary. To pursue such aims, as an effective strategy, targeted delivery of drugs/genes to specific tissues/cells has widely been investigated. Accordingly, colloidal delivery of nanosystems such as solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs), liposomes, niosomes and transfersomes have materialized great means towards improved targeted delivery of drug/gene cargoes. The potential advantages of solid lipid-based nanocarriers applications over other nanoparticles (NPs) are because of their high biocompatibility, higher drug loading capacity and scalability. In this study, we review the utility of various targeted solid lipid-based nanocarriers and discuss their applications in drug and gene delivery systems.