**6. Nanoflora**

As discussed above, herbal medicines are accompanied with many problems that prevent them from reaching their full potential as pharmaceutical formulations. These problems include – but not limited to: low solubility in water, low bioavailability, high toxicity and instability. Nanotechnology has shown great promise for many medical applications such as cancer diagnosis, chemotherapeutic drug delivery, and diabetes treatments [29]. This technology is beneficial in overcoming some difficulties encountered with using bulk variable drug mole‐ cules in their synthetic and natural forms.

In the last decade, tremendous attentions have been paid on replacing synthetic drugs by natural bioactive phytochemicals to eliminate synthetic drugs side effects. In order to reach this goal, the above mentioned limitations need to be overcome. Nanotechnology can play an important role in reducing or even eliminating such drawbacks. Such possibility will open the door for a wide range of candidate compounds that were overlooked in the past due to these limitations, to be revisited again. In this chapter, a systematic overview of the various methods that can be applied to overcome one or more of these limitations and will lead finally to an acceptable formulation composed mainly of the active phytochemical attached to or encapsu‐ lated in a nanocarrier system forming what will be known throughout this chapter as a nanoflora. Such combination is capable of reaching the final phases of testing these active compounds and be helpful in improving health care systems.
