title: Preparation and characterization of a lecithin nanoemulsion as a topical delivery system.
abstract: Purpose of this study was to establish a lecithin nanoemulsion (LNE) without any synthetic surfactant as a topical delivery vehicle and to evaluate its topical delivery potential by the following factors: particle size, morphology, viscosity, stability, skin hydration and skin penetration. Experimental results demonstrated that an increasing concentration of soybean lecithin and glycerol resulted in a smaller size LNE droplet and increasing viscosity, respectively. The droplet size of optimized LNE, with the glycerol concentration above 75% (w/w), changed from 92 (F10) to 58 nm (F14). Additionally, LNE, incorporated into o/w cream, improved the skin hydration capacity of the cream significantly with about 2.5-fold increase when the concentration of LNE reached 10%. LNE was also demonstrated to improve the penetrability of Nile red (NR) dye into the dermis layer, when an o/w cream, incorporated with NR-loaded LNE, applied on the abdominal skin of rat in vivo. Specifically, the arbitrary unit (ABU) of fluorescence in the dermis layer that had received the cream with a NR-loaded LNE was about 9.9-fold higher than the cream with a NR-loaded general emulsion (GE). These observations suggest that LNE could be used as a promising topical delivery vehicle for lipophilic compounds.
authors.affiliation: State-Key Laboratory of Biomembrane and Membrane, Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, 100084, Beijing, China. duanmx@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Huafeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yue
authors.forename: Guanlan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Qiu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Zemin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Mingxing
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Duan