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Microemulsions are a promising drug delivery system that can be used to enhance the bioavailability, solubility, and therapeutic efficacy of hydrophilic drugs. The downside of hydrophilic drugs is the poor solubility in lipid-based media; therefore, they require frequent dosing or high doses to achieve the therapeutic level. This may lead to unintended adverse effects and poor patient compliance Microemulsions can improve drug delivery by incorporating hydrophilic drugs within a thermodynamically stable and transparent oil-in-water emulsion. This can optimize the drug's solubility and permeability, leading to enhanced bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy. This review provides an insight to various routes of administration for delivering hydrophilic drugs using microemulsion. It will explore the use of microemulsion for oral, nasal, transdermal, and ocular delivery. The review also discusses the advantages, disadvantages and the physicochemical properties associated with each one of it. Overall, the article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the use of microemulsions as a drug delivery system for hydrophilic drugs administered via different routes.

The USFDA has approved sorafenib tosylate for the treatment of thyroid cancer, kidney cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Conventional formulations of sorafenib tosylate have challenges of solubility, permeability, side effects, and drug resistance across cancer cells. Targeted cancer therapies based on nanotechnology have proven to be effective and have the potential to become a useful tool in these approved cancer indications. In addition, Sorafenib tosylate's novel formulations are also being investigated for the unapproved indications like hepatocellular cancer, renal cancer, and cholangiocarcinoma with promising outcomes. Nanotechnology-based formulations have shown considerable gains in bioavailability, absorption, and increased anticancer efficacy. The article reviews some of the relevant patents and clinical trials in this field. The article also assesses challenges associated and future prospects in designing such clinical ready novel formulations of sorafenib tosylate.

Polymeric nanoparticles prepared using high pressure homogenizer (HPH) present some unique challenges during manufacturing which can be better understood by application of quality by design (QbD) approaches. The present review highlights the ways to identify the critical material attributes which includes the anticancer drugs, polymers, surfactants, solvent system and dispersion system. A comprehensive understanding of the critical processing parameters like pressure and number of cycles during the working of HPH used in putting forward the critical quality attributes such as size, shape, surface charge or droplet stabilization. Such QbD approach will involve development of an effective control strategy for would ensure safe encapsulation of anticancer drugs for successful product development. Proper addressing of the issues related to scaling-up would lead to successful commercialization of the nano-sized formulations loaded with anticancer drugs.

Nanogels are being explored as drug delivery agents for targeting cancer due to their easy tailoring properties and ability to efficiently encapsulate therapeutics of diverse nature through simple mechanisms. Nanogels are proficiently internalized by the target cells, avoid accumulating in nontarget tissues thereby lower the therapeutic dosage and minimize harmful side effects. However, there is an urgent need for relevant clinical data from nanogels so as to allow translation of the nanogel concept into a viable therapeutic application for the treatment of cancer. This review highlights some of the recent progress in nanogels as a carrier in the field of nanomedicine for the treatment of cancer. The present review critically analyzes the use of extracellular pH targeting for nanogels, siRNA delivery, PEGylated nanogels, multi-responsive nanogels and intracellular delivery of nanogels for improved therapy of cancer.