pharmaceutics Review Pharmaceutical Vehicles for Vaginal and Rectal Administration of Anti-HIV Microbicide Nanosystems Letícia Mesquita 1,2,† , Joana Galante 1,2,3,† , Rute Nunes 1,2 , Bruno Sarmento 1,2,4 and José das Neves 1,2,4,* 1 i3S—Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal;
[email protected] (L.M.);
[email protected] (J.G.);
[email protected] (R.N.);
[email protected] (B.S.) 2 INEB—Instituto de Engenharia Biomédica, Universidade do Porto, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal 3 ICBAS—Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal 4 CESPU, Instituto de Investigação e Formação Avançada em Ciências e Tecnologias da Saúde, 4585-116 Gandra, Portugal * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +351-220408800 † These authors contributed equally to this work. Received: 1 March 2019; Accepted: 22 March 2019; Published: 26 March 2019 Abstract: Prevention strategies play a key role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Vaginal and rectal microbicides hold great promise in tackling sexual transmission of HIV-1, but effective and safe products are yet to be approved and made available to those in need. While most efforts have been placed in finding and testing suitable active drug candidates to be used in microbicide development, the last decade also saw considerable advances in the design of adequate carrier systems and formulations that could lead to products presenting enhanced performance in protecting from infection. One strategy demonstrating great potential encompasses the use of nanosystems, either with intrinsic antiviral activity or acting as carriers for promising microbicide drug candidates.