Medicinal Patches and Drug Nanoencapsulation: A Noninvasive Alternative

Abstract

In recent years the development of medicinal patches capable of effectively deliver drugs has gained great interest among researchers. At the same time, drug encapsulation at the nanoscale turned out to be an outstanding approach to medical drug administration, avoiding the typical side-effects of traditional treatments. The conjunction of both medicinal patches and drug nanoencapsulation may lead to a new generation of noninvasive drug delivery systems. Therefore, the present chapter summarizes recent techniques for drug encapsulation and their stimuli-controlled release. It also provides a brief overview of passive skin permeation and transdermal drug administration mechanisms.