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Review
. 2020 Dec 18;12(12):1235.
doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics12121235.

The Phospholipid Research Center: Current Research in Phospholipids and Their Use in Drug Delivery

Simon Drescher  1 , Peter van Hoogevest  1
Affiliations
Review

The Phospholipid Research Center: Current Research in Phospholipids and Their Use in Drug Delivery

Simon Drescher et al. Pharmaceutics. .

Abstract

This review summarizes the research on phospholipids and their use for drug delivery related to the Phospholipid Research Center Heidelberg (PRC). The focus is on projects that have been approved by the PRC since 2017 and are currently still ongoing or have recently been completed. The different projects cover all facets of phospholipid research, from basic to applied research, including the use of phospholipids in different administration forms such as liposomes, mixed micelles, emulsions, and extrudates, up to industrial application-oriented research. These projects also include all routes of administration, namely parenteral, oral, and topical. With this review we would like to highlight possible future research directions, including a short introduction into the world of phospholipids.

Keywords: drug delivery; lecithin; oral; parenteral; phospholipids; topical.

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Conflict of interest statement

Simon Drescher declares no conflict of interest. Peter van Hoogevest is as well the Head of the Scientific Department of Lipoid GmbH. Lipoid GmbH had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Chemical structure of a phospholipid as exampled by 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) and the different alternative headgroups varying in the type of alcohol: phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) with ethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol (PG) with glycerol, phosphatidylserine (PS) with serine, and phosphatidylinositol (PI) with inositol.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of the 90 research projects supported so far by the Phospholipids Research Center Heidelberg (PRC) regarding the phospholipids’ administration type/basic research (left) and location of projects across the world (right), with the number of projects in parentheses.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(Left) Flow chart of isolation process steps of soybean PC derived from crude soybean oil. (Right) Visual appearance of soybean lecithin/PC fractions with variable PC content.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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