Liposomes: New Approaches for the Delivery of Antimicrobial Drugs

Treating diseases is becoming more difficult. Antimicrobial resistance, infections that form biofilms, drugs that are unstable and toxicity that limits the dose all block treatment. Liposomes provide one solution. Liposomes are a spherical artificial vesicle made mainly from phospholipid bilayers that surround a watery core. Because of this design drugs that like water (hydrophilic) can stay inside the core while drugs that like fat (lipophilic) can sit inside the bilayer, which makes liposomes a flexible platform for delivering antimicrobials. This narrative review explains liposome structure, the ways of making liposomes the mechanisms that matter for antimicrobial delivery and how liposomes have been used against bacterial fungal, mycobacterial and biofilm-associated infections. Encapsulating a drug in a liposome can protect a drug from breaking down too early change where the drug goes in the body raise the drug concentration at the infection site and protect healthy tissue. Surface changes and stimulus-responsive designs may help liposomes interact better with tissue or biofilms. However how well a liposome works depends on the drug chemistry, the lipid composition, the vesicle size, the surface charge, the route of administration and the surrounding biological environment. Bringing these systems into use is slowed by complex manufacturing, limited storage stability, inconsistent drug release, scale-up challenges, cost and the need for stronger clinical evidence. Liposomes are therefore promising delivery systems. They do not automatically defeat antimicrobial resistance and each drug-pathogen pair must be evaluated on its own. Further work, on manufacturing, safety, pharmacokinetics and clinically meaningful outcomes is essential.