**7. Conclusions and future trends**

Application of natural polymers and their semi-synthetic polymer derivatives provide the basis for many commercially available DDSs that range from the traditional macroscale DDSs to microscale, nanoscale, targeted, and stimuli- responsive DDSs. The effective encapsulation technique and the achieved encapsulation efficiency depend on the physical and chemical properties of the selected natural polymer (e.g. polysaccharides, proteins, lipids) such as solubility, thermal stability, and its ability to form stable colloidal particles in a specific system. Therefore, various encapsulation methods including chemical, physical, physicochemical, mechanical and thermal encapsulation were discussed in details, **Table 1**.

Lipid vesicles nanocarriers have been discovered in 1960s, and later became known as "liposomes". In 1995, the first nano-drug based on Pegylated liposomal doxorubicin "DOXIL" was approved by FDA for cancer treatment. Polymer-drug conjugates and liposomes represent most of the marketed NP therapeutics and continue to be investigated extensively. Nanoencapsulation using lipid nanoparticles offers a practical approach to increase the solubility of water-insoluble drugs or poorly water soluble agents. Lipids have shown to be effective natural material for micro- and nanoencapsulation of bioactive small molecules and biologics for therapeutic and diagnostic drug delivery applications. Compared to other encapsulating materials, lipid-based encapsulation systems offer advantages such as lowcost and easy to scale-up and sterilize high biocompatibility, higher encapsulation efficiency, higher drug loading, and feasibility of carrying both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs.

**43**

*Natural Polymers in Micro- and Nanoencapsulation for Therapeutic and Diagnostic…*

\*, Nedal Y. Abu-Thabit2

, Mahmoud H. Abu Elella6

1 Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of

2 Department of Chemical and Process Engineering Technology, Jubail Industrial

3 Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria

4 Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical

5 Center for Biomedical Research, Population Council, New York, 10065, USA

7 Pathology Department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

6 Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

\*Address all correspondences to: ndidi.ngwuluka@biodrudel.com

, Margaret O. Ilomuanya<sup>5</sup>

College, Jubail Industrial City, 31961, Saudi Arabia

Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA

and abuthabit\_nidal@yahoo.com

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*, Onyinye J. Uwaezuoke3

, Riham R. Mohamed6

,

,

and Noura A.A. Ebrahim7

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94856*

**Author details**

Joan O. Erebor4

Jos, Jos, Nigeria

Ndidi C. Ngwuluka1

Soliman M.A. Soliman6

*Natural Polymers in Micro- and Nanoencapsulation for Therapeutic and Diagnostic… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94856*
