Liposomes as multifaceted delivery system in the treatment of osteoporosis

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Treatment of osteoporosis with the available drug formulations is still challenging due to multiple associated limitations such as chronic treatment, off-target side effects, poor bone targeting, and low bioavailability. Adopting advanced bone-targeted drug delivery strategies like liposomes is one of the safe and effective approaches for osteoporosis treatment.

Areas covered: This review summarizes the applications of liposomes in gene delivery, bone regeneration, bone-targeted delivery, and as a carrier for drug encapsulation in the treatment of osteoporosis. Details of all the supportive studies are discussed here and the bone-specific roles of the strategies like new generation liposomes in osteoporosis are elaborated. The future scope of performing in-depth research on the bone-targeted liposomes is discussed.

Expert opinion: Liposomes-based bone-targeted delivery of therapeutics seems to be a promising approach for the effective treatment of osteoporosis. But till date, the tremendous in vitro and in vivo research on liposomes has failed to attain significant progress in their clinical translation. From bench to bedside success of the research an interdisciplinary collaboration between the preclinical and clinical experts engaged at different stages of liposomes development is required.

KEYWORDS:

• Bone targeting
• bone regeneration
• bone gene delivery
• drug carrier
• liposomes
• new generation liposomes
• osteoporosis

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of ICMR and DST-PURSE for their financial assistance.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Article highlights

• Currently, available treatment strategies are not successful in reversing the chronic bone disorder osteoporosis due to the drug-related limitations and complex bone biology.

• Adoption of the bone-targeted drug delivery system like liposomes is a promising approach for the effective treatment of osteoporosis. Due to the structural flexibility and biological compatibility, these lipid-based delivery systems have multiple diversified roles in the treatment of osteoporosis.

• Gene delivery to the bone, assisting bone regeneration, bone-specific targeted delivery, and as a carrier for drug encapsulation are the major applications of liposomes in osteoporosis treatment.

• For improving the liposomes-based delivery system, shortcomings of the conventional liposomes could be solved by utilizing proper strategies and developing modified new generation liposomes like transfersomes.

• Despite the significant success of liposomes-based research on osteoporosis treatment at the in vitro and preclinical level, its clinical translation is still in infancy. Strong collaboration between the experts involved in such research is needed for its successful clinical application in patients.

This box summarizes the key points contained in the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was performed with the financial support provided by the ‘Indian Council of Medical Research’ (ICMR), New Delhi, India under grant number (45/33/2019-NAN-BMS).