Lipopolysaccharide Nanosystems for the Enhancement of Oral Bioavailability

Nanosystems that incorporate both polymers and lipids have garnered attention as emerging nanotechnology approach for oral drug delivery. These hybrid systems leverage on the combined properties of polymeric and lipid-based nanocarriers while eliminating their inherent limitations. In view of the safety-related benefits of naturally occurring polymers, we have focused on systems incorporating polysaccharides and derivatives into the hybrid structure. The aim of this review is to evaluate existing biopolymers with specific focus on lipopolysaccharide hybrid systems and their advancement toward enhancing oral drug delivery. Furthermore, we shall identify future research areas that require further exploration toward achieving an optimized hybrid system for easy translation into clinical use. In this review, we have appraised formulations that combined polysaccharides/derivatives with lipids in a single nanocarrier system. These formulations were grouped into lipid-core-polysaccharide-shell systems, polysaccharide-core-lipid-shell systems, self-emulsifying lipopolysaccharide hybrid systems, and hybrid lipopolysaccharide matrix systems. In these systems, we highlighted how the polysaccharide phase enhances the oral absorption of encapsulated bioactives with regard to their function and mechanism. The various lipopolysaccharide designs presented in this review demonstrated significant improvement in pharmacokinetics of bioactives. A multitude of studies found lipopolysaccharide hybrid systems as nascent nanoplatforms for the oral delivery of challenging bioactives due to features that favor gastrointestinal absorption and bioavailability improvement. With future research already geared toward product optimization and scaling up processes, as well as detailed pharmacological and toxicology pre-clinical testing, these versatile systems will have remarkable impact in clinical application.