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Plant Science Today (PST)

Review Articles

Early Access

Advancing herbal therapeutics through nanotechnology: Innovations in drug delivery and pharmacokinetic enhancement

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.9646
Submitted
26 May 2025
Published
08-11-2025
Versions

Abstract

Herbal medicine has long been integral to global healthcare systems due to its therapeutic versatility and cultural significance. Nevertheless, its clinical utility is hampered by inherent limitations, such as low solubility and instability of numerous herbal bioactive. Nanotechnology has emerged as a modern approach to overcoming these challenges by improving botanical compounds’ solubility, stability and targeted delivery. The objective of this review article is to conduct a critical assessment of the application of nanotechnology to enhance the pharmacological properties of plant-derived therapeutics in herbal medicine. This review also includes an analysis of the bioavailability and site-specific delivery of herbal bioactive by examining advancements in Nano formulations, such as liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, Nano emulsions and lipid-based carriers. Furthermore, the review discusses the obstacles to clinical adoption of nanotechnology, including regulatory issues, production scaling issues and the necessity for longer-term safety investigations. This discussion will be supportive to guarantee nanotechnology's safe and efficient incorporation into herbal medicine. Nanotechnology has noteworthy importance for herbal medicines, like, to improve solubility, pharmacological activity enhancement, bioavailability, stability enhancement and site-specific delivery of herbal bioactives. Nanotechnology's transformative potential for herbal medicine necessitates large-scale human trials and comparative nano-delivery system investigations and interdisciplinary collaboration.

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