Over the past decades, a large number of drugs as well as drug candidates with poor dissolution characteristics have been witnessed, which invokes great interest in enabling formulation of these active ingredients. Poorly water-soluble drugs, especially biopharmaceutical classification system (BCS) II ones, are preferably designed as oral dosage forms if the dissolution limit can be broken through. Minimizing a drug’s size is an effective means to increase its dissolution and hence the bioavailability, which can be achieved by specialized dispersion techniques. This article reviews the most commonly used dispersion techniques for pharmaceutical processing that can practically enhance the dissolution and bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs. Major interests focus on solid dispersion, lipid-based dispersion (nanoencapsulation), and liquisolid dispersion (drug solubilized in a non-volatile solvent and dispersed in suitable solid excipients for tableting or capsulizing), covering the formulation development, preparative technique and potential applications for oral drug delivery. Otherwise, some other techniques that can increase the dispersibility of a drug such as co-precipitation, concomitant crystallization and inclusion complexation are also discussed. Various dispersion techniques provide a productive platform for addressing the formulation challenge of poorly water-soluble drugs. Solid dispersion and liquisolid dispersion are most likely to be successful in developing oral dosage forms. Lipid-based dispersion represents a promising approach to surmounting the bioavailability of low-permeable drugs, though the technique needs to traverse the obstacle from liquid to solid transformation. Novel dispersion techniques are highly encouraged to develop for formulation of poorly water-soluble drugs.

Aptamers are a class of targeting ligands that bind exclusively to biomarkers of interest. Aptamers have been identified as candidates for the construction of various smart systems for therapy, diagnosis, bioimaging, and drug delivery due to their high target affinity and specificity. Aptamers are accounted as chemical antibodies that can be readily linked to drugs, sensors, signal enhancers, or nanocarriers for functionalization. Use of aptamer-guided medications, especially nanomedicines, has resulted in encouraging outcomes compared to those use of aptamer-free counterparts. This article reviews recent advances in the use of aptamers as targeting ligands for various biomedical and pharmaceutical purposes. Special interests focus on aptamer-based theranostics, biosensing, bioimaging, drug potentiation, and targeted drug delivery.

Selenium as a biologically active element lends much support to health maintenance and disease prevention. It is now presenting pleiotropic effects on therapy and drug delivery. In this study, a profiling on the physiological functions, therapeutic significances, clinical/preclinical performances, and biomedical and drug delivery applications of selenium in different modalities was carried out. Major interests focused on selenium-based nanomedicines in confronting various diseases pertaining to selenium or not, especially in antitumor and antidiabetes. Furthermore, the article exclusively discusses selenium nanoparticles featured by ameliorative functions with emphasis on their applications in medical practice and drug delivery. The state-of-the-art in medical discovery as well as research and development on selenium and nano-selenium is discussed in this review.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) remains a great challenge in treatment due to pathological complexity. It has been proven that phytomedicines and natural medicines have prominent antidiabetic effects. This work aimed to develop selenium-layered nanoparticles (SeNPs) for oral delivery of mulberry leaf and Pueraria Lobata extracts (MPE), a group of phytomedicines with significant hypoglycemic activities, to achieve a synergic antidiabetic effect. MPE-loaded SeNPs (MPE-SeNPs) were prepared through a solvent diffusion/in situ reduction technique and characterized by particle size, ζ potential, morphology, entrapment efficiency (EE) and drug loading (DL). The resulting MPE-SeNPs were 120 nm around in particle size with EE of 89.38% for rutin and 90.59% for puerarin, two marker components in MPE. MPE-SeNPs exhibited a slow drug release and good physiological stability in the simulated digestive fluid. After oral administration, MPE-SeNPs produced significant hypoglycemic effects both in the normal and diabetic rats. Ex vivo intestinal imaging and cellular examinations demonstrated that MPE-SeNPs were provided with outstanding intestinal permeability and transepithelial transport aptness. It was also revealed that MPE-SeNPs could alleviate the oxidative stress, improve the pancreatic function, and promote the glucose utilization by adipocytes. Our study provides new insight into the use of integrative nanomedicine containing phytomedicines and selenium for DM treatment.