Natural plant excipients for the production of vitamin A1 loaded nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC)

1. Aleksandra Zielińska
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
e-mail: zielinska-aleksandra@wp.pl
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2.  Nowadays, customers are purchasing their cosmetic
products very consciously. Especially they prefer cosmetics
made of pure natural ingredients.
 This presents a challenge for the development, because
organic lipids and oils have a high concentration of
unsaturated fatty acids, which can turn rancid by oxidative
degradation.
 To circumvent this problem, lipids and oils with native
antioxidants for self protection against oxidative
degradation are increasingly available on the market.
 If the use of those compounds can offer a real alternative
with equally stable products was investigated by
comparing a pre-existing vitamin A1 NLC formulation with
semi-synthetic ingredients to a newly developed
formulation where all semi-synthetic ingredients were
replaced by organic products from plants.
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3.  Rotor stator dispersion (Ultra-Turrax T25,
Jahnke und Kunkel, Germany) was combined
with high pressure homogenization (Micron
LAB 40, APV, Germany) to produce two
formulations of vitamin A1 loaded NLC
suspensions:
 I - contained solid lipid and semi-synthetic
oil (Miglyol)
 II - contained solid lipid and natural oil
(Meadowfoam seed oil).
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4.  light microscopy (Leitz Wetzlar, Germany) for the detection
of potentially large particles
or agglomerations.
 photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS, Nano ZS, Malvern
Instruments, UK) – analyse the mean particle size (z-average)
and polydispersity index (PI) of both formulations-loaded NLC
 laser diffraction (LD, static light scattering) was performed by
using a Mastersizer 2000 (Malvern Instruments, UK).
 zeta potential of produced vitamin A1-loaded NLC for both
oils was detected in conductivity adjusted water (50 µS/cm)
and original dispersion medium by using again the Zetasizer
Nano ZS (Malvern Instruments, UK)
 high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) – was used
to assess the chemical stability
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5.  A natural vitamin A1 loaded NLC
formulation was successfully
developed with same physical and
chemical stability as the semi-
synthetic formulation. This natural
formulation follows the latest trend of
“green cosmetics” and has also a
higher added value.
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