Introduction: The development of multifunctional drug carriers provides many opportunities in the field of drug delivery. Among them, carriers loaded with both drug and superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles would allow the combination of chemotherapy with the possibility of monitoring or controlling the distribution of the nanocarrier in the body, triggering drug release and/or applying a synergistic hyperthermia treatment.
Areas covered: The present review covers biocompatible lipid-based nanotechnologies that have been employed to co-encapsulate drug and iron oxide. Depending on their physico-chemical properties, lipids are able to generate monophasic lipophilic nanodispersions or more complex structures containing both lipidic and aqueous domains. This review describes the rationale behind these nanoobjects and how they can be prepared.
Expert opinion: This review focuses on the co-encapsulation aspects of these hybrid systems and discusses in particular the possible heterogeneities in drug-to-iron oxide ratio and the difficulties that could be encountered in the construction of these biocompatible multifunctional drug carriers.
Keywords: Cubosomes; ISAsomes; NLC; SLN; SPION; iron oxide; liposome; nanoemulsions.