Development and characterization of essential oils based nanoliposomes with antifungal potentialities for biomedical applications

The number of cases related to superficial or systemic fungal infections has been increasing throughout the last three decades worldwide, couple with this, the current treatments to address these kind of infections are carried out during long periods and can present side effects, especially those for oral administration. The necessity to develop more efficient, biocompatible, patient compliance, and safer treatments in biomedical settings is receiving special attention using nanotechnology as a potential platform to design new drug delivery systems (DDS). Despite the broad range of novel nanocarrier systems in drug delivery, lack of biocompatibility, poor penetration, low entrapment efficiency, and toxicity are some of the significant challenges that remain to address. Such practices are even more demanding when bioactive agents are intended to be loaded on a nanocarrier system, especially for topical treatment purposes. For the previous reasons, the search for more efficient nano-vesicular systems with a high biocompatibility index and controlled releases. With particular reference, nanoliposomes, as robust nanocarriers, are becoming popular for drug delivery applications because of safety, patient compliance, and quick action. Nanoliposomes are bilayer vesicles at the nano scale having an aqueous core and one or more concentric phospholipid membranes able to encapsulate hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds, they can be synthetized by using natural ingredients (e.g., egg yolk and soybean lecithin) which allow them to act as effective delivery drug system. Among the numerous replacements plant-derived compounds, essential oils (EOs) have revealed a wide range of biological activities, including inhibition against fungi species. However, their implementation as antifungal agents has been limited due to their volatility, low water solubility and limited administration routes. In the present work it was developed the synthesis and characterization of three different essential oils: clove essential oil (CEO), oregano essential oil (OEO) and tea tree oil (TTO) loaded nanoliposomes i) to explore the synthesis conditions of nanoliposomes ii) to compare the effectiveness of EOs and EOs encapsulated in nanoliposomes and iii) to investigate the antifungal efficacy against dermatophyte fungi Trichophyton rubrum by performing the Mycelial Growth Inhibition test (MGI). The mean size of the nanoliposomes around 37.12± 1.23 nm, PdI of 0.377±0.007 and zeta potential values of -36.94±0.36 mV were obtained by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and spherical morphology was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. The presence of EO into nanoliposomes was displayed by attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. Entrapment efficiency values of 91.57 ± 2.5% were achieved for CEO nanoliposomes. In vitro antifungal activity of nanoliposomes tested against Trichophyton rubrum strains revealed that CEO nanoliposomes exhibited the highest MGI % (98.2%) at concentration of 1.5 µl/ml compared to the rest of formulations. Therefore, this work revealed that EOs loaded nanoliposomes can be used as natural antifungal agents for pharmaceutical proposes.

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