Transfersomes are a form of elastic or deformable vesicle, which were first introduced in the early 1990s. Elasticity is generated by incorporation of an edge activator in the lipid bilayer structure. The original composition of these vesicles was soya phosphatidyl choline incorporating sodium cholate and a small concentration of ethanol. Transfersomes are applied in a non-occluded method to the skin and have been shown to permeate through the stratum corneum lipid lamellar regions as a result of the hydration or osmotic force in the skin. They have been used as drug carriers for a range of small molecules, peptides, proteins and vaccines, both in vitro and in vivo. Transfersomes possess an infrastructure consisting of hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties together and as a result can accommodate drug molecules with wide range of solubility. They can act as a carrier for low as well as high molecular weight drugs e.g. analgesic, anesthetic, corticosteroids, sex hormone, anticancer, insulin, gap junction protein, and albumin.
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