Nanotherapeutics: Emerging Trends in Management of Psoriasis

Background: Psoriasis is described as a T-cell mediated complex autoimmune reaction of the skin characterized by inflammatory and hyper-proliferative processes. There are many treatment strategies available for the management of psoriasis with their respective pros and cons. Conventional therapeutic options are not always satisfactory in terms of efficacy and safety which necessitates the development of alternative delivery approaches. Objective: Advancements in nanotechnology provide a platform for wide therapeutic options towards targeted delivery in psoriasis. Nanocarriers assist in improving the therapeutic efficacy of anti-psoriatic drugs with minimal toxicity. They also aid in co-delivery of drugs aiming for “combination of drugs-multi-target approach”. Further, these drug delivery carriers also attain high drug encapsulation, improve the stability of therapeutic moiety and reduce the dose. Various properties of the nanocarriers including composition, size and its surface properties affect the deposition and penetration of the therapeutic moiety. This review highlights different nanosystems explored in the management of psoriasis i.e., lipid based systems, surfactant based systems and polymer based systems. Conclusion: Persistent progress in the development of new formulations utilizing these different nanosystems has lead to the efficient treatment of psoriasis. The present review provides an outline on the current state-of-art in above discussed nanosystems for delivery of anti-psoriatic agents acting on different molecular targets of psoriasis. These nanocarriers significantly improved the therapeutic outcome and thereby circumvented the concerns associated with available treatment options for psoriasis. The emerging strategies discussed in this review shows potential and may yield enormous improvement in psoriasis management.