Preparation of osthole-loaded nano-vesicles for skin delivery: Characterization, in vitro skin permeation and preliminary in vivo pharmacokinetic studies

The main objective of the present research was to evaluate the flexible nano-vesicles for transdermal delivery of osthole. The nano-vesicles were formulated, characterized and evaluated for their physicochemical properties, in vitro skin permeation and in vivo plasma concentration. The encapsulation efficiency of osthole in ethosome and transfersome was measured to be 83.3 ± 4.8% and 80.9 ± 3.6%, respectively. In vitro studies showed that osthole ethosome provided an enhanced transdermal flux of 6.98 ± 1.6 μg/cm2/h and a decreased lag time of 2.45 h across porcine ear skin. Moreover, ethosome also showed increased skin deposition of the drug over transfersome (1.5-fold) and saturated solution of osthole in 35% ethanol (2.1-fold). Data from in vivo pharmacokinetic studies showed that AUC and Cmax of the osthole loaded-ethosome were remarkably increasing compared with the other formulations. Thus, osthole ethosome was considered as an effective delivery system for the drug.

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