Design of oleic acid/alkyl glycoside composite vesicles as cosmetics carrier: stability, skin permeability and antioxidant activity

Abstract

Biocompatible fatty acids are natural biological materials which exhibit widespread biomedical applications. Nevertheless, their application in vesicle forms is hampered by strong pH sensitivity and poor stability to changes in ionic strength, temperature, and storage. In the investigation, the incorporation of alkyl glycoside (APG), a surfactant with non-ionic properties, into the oleic acid (OA) vesicles was undertaken as a means to address this issue. The newly formed OA/APG composite vesicles form in a pH range of between 5.4 and 7.4, which is close to the pH range of the physiological environment. The stability studies results showed that the OA/APG composite vesicles have excellent stability in terms of ionic strengths, temperature and storage. The formation of NAR-loaded OA/APG composite vesicles was demonstrated through FT-IR, DSC and XRD. In vitro topical delivery and skin retention studies confirmed that the composite vesicles improve skin permeation rate and have better skin permeation behavior. Antioxidant activity experiments confirmed that the antioxidant effect composite vesicles were significantly increased as compared to the naringenin (NAR). This finding has theoretical implications for the use of drug-loaded fatty acid vesicles in cosmetics industries and topical delivery systems.

Keywords:

• Fatty acid vesicles
• cosmetics carrier
• stability
• topical delivery
• antioxidant activity

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the School of Pharmacy, Jiamusi University and Heilongjiang Huahao Testing Technology Service Co., Ltd, for providing instruments and reagents.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Heilongjiang Province key research and development plan project (JD22A016), Heilongjiang Province “Double first-class” discipline collaborative innovation achievement construction project (LJGXCG2022-126), Basic Scientific Research Project for Heilongjiang Provincial Colleges and Universities (2022-KYYWF-0609), Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of New Drug Development and Pharmacotoxicological Evaluation Open Fund Project (kfkt2023-09).