Enhancing Drug Delivery for COVID-19

By Chetana Krishnan

The situation of COVID-19 has led to the development of so many research areas, one of them being drug delivery enhancement. Researchers are still trying to figure out effective ways by which drugs can be injected into both COVID and non-COVID infected patients. Liposomes act as one of the best vectors to carry the drug into the patient’s body. Liposomes are small cellular structures that are hydrophilic on the outside and hydrophobic on the inside. There are different types of liposomes varying in the percentage of hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity (e.g. 40% hydrophobic and 60% hydrophilic and so on).

Limits of Using a Liposome and How to Overcome Them

A drug is conjugated with a liposome in the laboratory (in vitro) using slide procedures. The whole conjugated system will be exposed to suspension. Since liposomes have a very short life span, they are prone to losing their properties and will degrade over time. This will decrease the efficiency of drug delivery and hence, are not used for continuous drug delivery mechanisms. New findings show that the properties of liposomes can be increased by increasing the intermolecular distance between the drug molecule and the liposomal structure.

New Findings

The working of the new finding was first tested with the psychoactive component of Cannabis sativa. The experiment showed higher accuracy and proved that the enhanced liposome showed a higher proficiency and stability than the existing slide’s liposomes. This will definitely increase the phase and usage of drug delivery systems, especially for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks among patients.

Figure 1: Estimation of liposomal structures