Liposomes have been widely investigated since 1970 as drug carriers for improving the delivery of therapeutic agents to specific sites in the body. As a result, numerous improvements have been made to make this technology potential the treatment of certain diseases in the clinics. This review mainly focused on various aspects related to the vesicular system, including method of preparation, stabilization, drawbacks, and applications. Various types of vesicular systems such as liposomes, niosomes, transfersomes, pharmacosomes, and nanoparticle have been discussed briefly along with some other emerging vescicular systems (photosomes, archaesomes, genosomes, cryptosomes, discomes) focusing on cell specific gene transfer, photodynamic therapy and ligand mediated drug targeting. Present applications of the liposomes are in the immunology, dermatology, vaccine adjuvant, eye disorders, brain targeting, infective disease and in tumour therapy. The new developments in this field are of specific binding properties of a drug-carrying liposome to a target cell such as a tumor cell and specific molecules in the body (antibodies, proteins, peptides etc), stealth liposomes which are especially used as carriers for hydrophilic (water soluble) anticancer drugs like doxorubicin, mitoxantrone and bisphosphonate-liposome mediated depletion of macrophages. This review would help researchers working in the area of liposomal drug delivery.

To investigate two cyanobacteria isolated from different origins i.e. Lyngbya aestuarii(L. aestuarii) from brackish water and Aphanothece bullosa (A. bullosa) from fresh water paddy fields for antifungal and antileishmanila activity taking Candida albicans and Leishmaniadonovain as targets. Methods: Biomass of L. aestuarii and A. bullosa were harvested after 40 and 60 d respectively and lyophilized twice in methanol (100%) and redissolved in methanol (5%) for bioassay. Antifungal bioassay was done by agar well diffusion method while antileishmanial, by counting cell numbers and flageller motility observation of promastigotes and amastigotes fromL. donovani . Fluconazole and 5% methanol were used as control. Results: Both the cyanobacteria were found to be potent source of antifungal activity keeping fluconazole as positive control, however, methanolic crude extract (15 mg/mL) of A. bullosa was found more potent (larger inhibition zone) over that of methanolic crude extract of L. aestuarii. Similarly antileishmanial activity of crude extract (24.0 mg/mL) of A. bullosa was superior over that of methanolic crude extract of L. aestuarii (25.6 mg/mL). Conclusions: Antifungal and antileishmanial drugs are still limited in the market. Screening of microbes possessing antifungal and antileishmanial activity drug is of prime importance. Cyanobacteria are little explored in this context because most of the drugs in human therapy are derived from microorganisms, mainly bacterial, fungal and actinomycetes. Thus in the present study two cyanobacterial strains from different origins showed potent source of antifungal and antileishmanial biomolecules.