Indo Global Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2013; 3(2): 124-133 124 Nanoemulsions in Cancer Therapy Smriti Khatri * , Pratyush Lohani * , Shweta Gandhi Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Pharmacy, New Delhi, India Address for Correspondance: Smriti Khatri: smriti_dua@yahoo.com ; Pratyush Lohani : pratyush11april@gmail.com ABSTRACT: Emulsions are two-phase mixtures of insoluble liquids in which a “continuous phase” surrounds discrete vesicles of the “dispersed phase”. Nanoemulsions or mini-emulsions or ultrafine emulsions or submicron emulsions are transparent or translucent oil-in-water (o/w) or water-in-oil droplets with a mean droplet diameter in the range between 100 and 500 nm. Nanoemulsion-based delivery system is superior to conventional topical dosage forms, such as ointment and gels, in several respects. Nanoemulsions are composed of safe, well-characterized ingredients, combined in a proprietary manner to yield stable emulsion. Cancer is a class of disorders characterized by abnormal growth of cells proliferating in an uncontrolled way.The efficiency of anticancer drugs is limited by their unsatisfactory properties, such as poor solubility, narrow therapeutic window, and intensive cytotoxicity to normal tissues, which may be the causes of treatment failure in cancer. Nanoemulsions increase the solubility of drugs exhibiting poor water solubility through entrapment in the core of the nanoemulsion droplets. © 2011 IGJPS. All rights reserved. KEYWORDS: Nanoemulsion; Cancer; Therapy; Emulsion; Formulation. INTRODUCTION Emulsions are two-phase mixtures of insoluble liquids in which a “continuous phase” surrounds discrete vesicles of the “dispersed phase”. An emulsion is usually stabilized by some kind of surfactant system to prevent the dispersed phase from coalescing into a macroscopic phase [1, 2]. In drug delivery systems, the continuous phase is usually the aqueous phase, and the drug often is carried in (or is itself) the non- aqueous liquid phase of the emulsion. Many emulsions are of micron size scale but most can also be formulated on the nano- size scale Surfactant molecules, stabilizing emulsions are often the same that form micelles. Hydrocarbon or fluorocarbon liquids are generally employed as the dispersed phase, which most often carries a hydrophobic drug; thus the emulsion carriers must be dissolved or disrupted some how for quick release to transfer the drug to the target cells and tissues. More stable emulsions slowly deliver therapeutics by diffusion from the hydrophobic interior. Nanoemulsions or mini-emulsions or ultrafine emulsions or submicron emulsions are transparent or translucent oil-in-water (o/w) or water-in-oil droplets with a mean droplet diameter in the range between 100 and 500 nm [3-9, 1]. Nanoemulsions are the thermodynamically stable isotropic system in which two immiscible liquid (water and oil) are mixed to form a single phase by means of an appropriate surfactants or its mix with a droplet diameter approximately in the range of 0.5-100 um [10]. Unlike the thermodynamically stable micro emulsions, nanoemulsions are kinetically stable with great stability in suspension due to their small droplet size [11]. Nanoemulsions are submicron sized emulsions which are under extensive investigation as INDO GLOBAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES ISSN 2249- 1023