Table 1.

Nanomaterial-based ocular DDS and their therapeutic characteristics.

DDS	Diameter	Structure	Molecule type	Advantages	Disadvantages	Residence time of drugs	Drugs encapsulated in the formulation	References
Nanoparticles	< 1 μm	Capsule or spherical	N/A	Exhibiting antifungal activity in vitro and reducing inflammation in vivo	Low drug loading capacity, particle aggregation, difficult drug release	Higher release in first 8 h vs. NATA, then minimal release	NATA	Gu et al. (2022)
Solid lipid nanoparticles	100–150 nm	Solid lipid nanoparticles	Lipophilic drugs	Higher drug loading capacity, sustained drug releasing, drug targeting and scalable production	Potential cytotoxicity, stringent storage conditions	Up to 8 h	NATA, Amphotericin B, Fluconazole, Voriconazole	Parhi and Suresh (2012); Thukral et al. (2014)
Microemulsion	20–200 nm	Oil–water mixture	Lipophilic or hydrophilic	Enhancing drug residence time on the cornea	May cause eye irritation	Higher permeability and improved antifungal efficacy than drug suspension	Moxifloxacin, Voriconazole	Mohan et al. (2024)
Liposome	<2 μm	Circular vesicles composed of a single or multilayer phospholipid	Lipophilic or hydrophilic	Non-toxic	Difficult to store, high production cost, difficult to transport	N/A	Fluconazole, Voriconazole, Amphotericin B, Posaconazole, Rapamycin	Zhang et al. (2019)
Micelle	<100 nm	Micelle-like	N/A	Simple to manufacture, high drug solubility, low toxicity, long circulation time, tissue permeability	Unstable over long periods, supports only short-term sustained release, insufficient for hydrophilic drugs	Up to 8 h	Amphotericin B, Itraconazole, Voriconazole	Nishiyama and Kataoka (2006); Jaiswal et al. (2015)
Cuboid	48.17 ± 0.65 nm	Cuboid-like	Lipophilic, hydrophilic, or amphiphilic	Non-toxic, biodegradable, high biocompatibility, sustained drug release, high bioadhesion	N/A	N/A	Fluconazole, Sertaconazole nitrate	Nasr et al. (2020) Younes et al. (2018)
Nanocarrier Gel	N/A	Gel network or “egg-box-like”	N/A	Prolonging drug release time, improving efficacy and stability	N/A	Over 12 h	Fluconazole	Patel et al. (2016); Soliman et al. (2019)
Dendrimers	1–10 nm	Dendritic	N/A	Older generations carry cations, suitable for ocular drug delivery	Potential cytotoxicity	N/A	Amphotericin B, Fluconazole, Voriconazole	Kalomiraki et al. (2016)
Niosomes	10–1,000 nm	Vesicle-like	Lipophilic or hydrophilic	Good chemical stability, biodegradable, high biocompatibility, non-immunogenic	N/A	24 h for the release of NATA to reach 75%.	NATA	El-Mofty et al. (2020)