Advanced Inorganic Nanosystems for Skin Drug Delivery

On/into/through the skin drug delivery represents an attractive alternative for the oral route, providing local and/or systemic drug delivery. Due to its complex and well-organised structure, most of the drugs show difficulties to penetrate the human skin. Therefore, enormous efforts have been invested to develop intelligent drug delivery systems overcoming the skin barrier with particular emphasis on increasing therapeutic activity and minimizing undesirable side-effects. Most of these strategies require the use of singular materials with new properties. In particular, and on the basis of their inherent properties, including biocompatibility, biodegradability and relative low-cost, inorganic nanoparticles are ideal candidates for the development of skin drug delivery systems. This review provides an updated and comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the trends towards skin drug delivery with a particular focus in the attractive alternative offered by inorganic-based nanosystems.