Lipobeads as Drug Delivery Systems

A relatively new type of nanoparticles – lipobeads – a liposome-hydrogel assembly is a novel drug delivery system. Due to their bi-compartmental structure, lipobeads are of great potential for application as drug carriers with high therapeutic efficiency. It was shown that aggregation of lipobeads and its reversibility can be controlled by the hydrophobic modification of nanogels and their thermal or ionic collapsing within lipobeads. The discovered reversible and irreversible aggregation was proposed as a key step for designing two types of the so-called combined drug delivery systems. Their novelty and advantages were discussed.