Preparation And Properties Of Coenzyme Q10 Loaded Niosomes And Gels

Coenzyme Q10 is a yellow and lipid soluble vitamin analogue,which is often found in blood,mitochondria and cell membrane in human body.It is a natural antioxidant and plays an important role in maintaining various biochemical pathways of the body.It has shown a variety of pharmacological activities against chronic heart failure,diabetes,cancer,cataract,heart and spleen syndrome and so on.In addition,it also acts as a nutritional supplement,which is considered to be the third largest edible nutritional supplement in the world.At the same time,because of its excellent anti-aging and antioxidant properties,it is also widely used in the cosmetics industry.However,due to its high molecular weight,low water solubility and low bioavailability,its development has been greatly limited.Therefore,various drug delivery carriers have been explored to overcome their limitations.In this paper,we prepared niosome carriers with Tween and cholesterol to improve the stability and bioavailability of CoQ10,and was encapsulated in gel.Through investigating the properties of the drug loaded gel,the application of CoQ10 will be further expanded in food and other aspects.(1)Preparation and properties of CoQ10 niosomesIn this paper,the film hydration method was used as the preparation method.The preparation methods of niosomes were optimized by single factor method,and the encapsulation efficiency(EE)was used as the index.The final preparation methods of CoQ10 loaded niosomes(CoQ10-Nio)were as follows:Tween 60 was used as surfactant,the mass ratio of surfactant to cholesterol(Surf/Chol)was 2:1,the mass ratio of CoQ10 to surfactant(CoQ10/Surf)was 1:10,the hydration temperature was 60 ~oC,and the hydration time was 60 min.The encapsulation efficiency of prepared niosomes was 93.09%,and the particle size was 136.3±0.8 nm.PEG-CoQ10-Nio and CS-CoQ10-Nio were prepared by modifying the optimized niosomes.It was found that the particle size of PEG modified vesicles decreased slightly and the entrapment efficiency remained basically unchanged.However,after CS modification,the particle size of CS-CoQ10-Nio increased significantly and the potential of niosomes changed from negative to positive.The entrapment efficiency of CS-Co Q 10-Nio was slightly lower than that of CoQ10-Nio.The niosomes were characterized by TEM,FTIR and DSC.The results showed that PEG modified niosomes might be the hydrogen bonding,CS modified niosomes might be the electrostatic and hydrogen bonding.The changes of some functional groups indicate that the polymer was successfully modified on the surface of niosomes.CoQ10 existed in an amorphous state in the niosomes.Compared with the ethanol solution of CoQ10,the hydroxyl radical scavenging capacity of CoQ10 was significantly enhanced after partial niosome embedding(P<0.05).The photo and thermal stability experiments showed that PEG modification could improve the stability of niosomes,while CS modification had no significant effect on the stability of niosomes.After 60days of storage,the CoQ10 retention rate of PEG/surf 1:2 was still close to 100%.Compared with the ethanol solution of CoQ10,CoQ10 had a good sustained release effect in vitro after being encapsulated by niosomes.(2)Preparation and characterization of CoQ10 niosome gels matrixCarbomer(CBM)was used as the gel matrix,and the composite gel CBM-SCL-Gel was prepared by adding different scleroglucan(SCL)with different mass ratio.The rheological and textural properties of the composite gel were investigated.The results showed that the viscosity and modulus of the composite gel increased significantly with the increase of SCL content,and SCL improved the gel properties of carbomer gel.The addition of the moisturizer glycerol in the gel did not affect the gel properties.The gel was characterized by SEM,FTIR and so on.The results showed that the composite gel formed a dense network structure,and CBM and SCL were mainly cross-linked by hydrogen bonds.The swelling behaves of the composite gel conformed to the pseudo-second-order kinetics.With the addition of SCL,the water absorption mechanism of the Carbomer gel tends to the non-Fickian diffusion mode.The optimized formula(CBM/SCL 5:5 and 10%glycerol)were used as Gel matrix,and the CoQ10,CoQ10-Nio and PEG-CoQ10-Nio respectively were added to prepare drug-loaded gels(CoQ10-Gel,N-Gel,P-N-Gel).Through characterization of rheological properties,Texture,FTIR,DSC and DLS of niosome gel,it was found that niosomes did not affect gel properties,but there might be interactions between niosomes and gels.The CoQ10 niosomes exist as amorphous in the gel.The storage stability of niosome gel was investigated.It was found that after storage for 30days,the retention rate of CoQ10 was still 92%(4~oC,N-Gel).