| β-Carotene is a kind of natural pigments mainly found in many fruits and vegetables. β-Carotene have forty carbon molecules and multiple conjugated double bonds typically. β-carotene may have a number of potential health benefits for human. However, it use in food industry is limited mostly because of it poor water-solubility, low oil-solubility and bad biocompatibilty. So it is very important for looking for a kind of material to improve the solubility, the biocompatibilty and the stability of β-carotene.In order to improve the drug loading and stability of β-carotene, in this study, we use mesoporous silica nanoparticles MCM-41 as the drug carrier to assemble β-carotene. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles MCM-41 which have high surface areas(several hundred m2·g-1), tunable pore sizes, narrow pore sizes distributions, well-modified surface, no toxicity and good biocompatibility, are fit for working as a carrier to load drugs. Because of mesoporous MCM-41 has shape selectivity, we choose 1,3,5-TMB as a kind of organic modifier to modulate the pore size of mesoporous silica nanoparticles MCM-41 carefully. TEM, FT-IR, elemental analysis, and N2 adsorption-desorption were used to characterize the MCM-41 and β-carotene/MCM-41 carriers system. The research also investigated the influence of the type of impregnated solvent, the optimal ratio of mixed impregnated solvent, the loading time, the β-carotene/MCM-41 mass ratio and the amount of pore en-larging agent for loading β-carotene. The results shows that MCM-41 has good sphericity and regular pore structure. As a drug carrier, the modified MCM-41 showing a shorter drug loading time, a higher drug loading and the stability of β-carotene in drug assemblies has improved.Eventually, in order to optimize the formulation parameters of β-carotene loaded MCM-41 mesoporous silica nanoparticles. Experiments were designed according to a three-level, three-variable Box-Behnken design. The independent variables included loading time(A), the amount of pore en-larging agent(B), the β-carotene /MCM-41 mass ratio(C) and the response variable were the drug loading and the retention rate of β-carotene in assemblies. Calculated by the software,we obtained the optimal formulation parameters of β-carotene/MCM-41 carriers system: A, B and C levels were 20 h, 0.75 m L and 2.5, respectively. The observed responses are in close agreement with the predicted values of the quadratic regression mathematic models. The results indicated that the Box-Behnken design(BBD) is suitable for optimizing the formulation of β-carotene loaded MCM-41 mesoporous silica nanoparticles. |
