Oil-in-water nanoemulsions are suitable for carrying hydrophobic compounds: Indomethacin as a model of anti-inflammatory drug

Oil-in-water nanoemulsions are increasingly being used as delivery systems for encapsulating lipophilic components in functional food, personal care and pharmaceutical products. In the current study, we developed a multimodal platform to carry hydrophobic indomethacin or magnetic nanoparticles, or both. As a consequence, this platform has great potential for therapeutic or imaging purposes. By optimizing the system composition and homogenization conditions, a nanoemulsion with a mean droplet diameter of about 200 nm and a low polydispersity index (<0.2) was formed. The plain nanoemulsion was shown to be innocuous in cellular studies and did not present acute toxicity (observed in a rat model). More interesting was the finding that nanoemulsions loaded with indomethacin presented a significantly different anti-inflammatory than the free drug.

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