Design and development of vitamin C-encapsulated proliposome with improved in-vitro and ex-vivo antioxidant efficacy

Abstract

Vitamin C, as an antioxidant additive in pharmaceutical and food products, is susceptible to environmental conditions, and new design strategies are needed to enhance its stability. The aim of this study is to prepare vitamin C proliposome using film deposition on the carrier by applying different factors, and optimise the characteristics of the obtained powder using the design expert^® software. The optimised formulation demonstrated acceptable flowability with 20% vitamin C loading. This formulation released about 90% vitamin C within 2 h and showed higher (1.7-fold) in-vitro antioxidant activity. Ex-vivo antioxidant activity was 1.9 and 1.6 times higher in brain and liver cells, respectively. A 27% reduction in malondialdehyde (MDA) level of liver cell was obtained comparing free vitamin C. Therefore, this study results suggest that the vitamin C-encapsulated proliposome powder might be an appropriate carrier for oral drug delivery of vitamin C with better antioxidant efficacy.

Keywords:

• Vitamin C
• proliposome
• ex-vivo antioxidant activity
• in-vitro antioxidant activity

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dr. Saeed Daneshamouz for his beneficial comments in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was part of the Pharm.D project of Maryam Karimi and was financially supported by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences [Grant No. 94-01-103-10903].