The (±)-α-Tocopherol (TP) with vitamin E activity has been encapsulated into biocompatible poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) carriers, which results in the formation of well-defined nanosized (d ~200–220 nm) core-shell structured particles (NPs) with 15–19% of drug loading (DL%). The optimal ratios of the polymer carriers, the TP active drug as well as the applied Pluronic F127 (PLUR) non-ionic stabilizing surfactant, have been determined to obtain NPs with a TP core and a polymer shell with high encapsulation efficiency (EE%) (69%). The size and the structure of the prepared core-shell NPs as well as the interaction of the carriers and the PLUR with the TP molecules have been determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and turbidity studies, respectively. Moreover, the dissolution of the TP from the polymer NPs has been investigated by spectrophotometric measurements. It was clearly confirmed that increase in the EE% from ca. 70% (PLA/TP) to ca. 88% (PLGA65/TP) results in the controlled release of the hydrophobic TP molecules (7 h, PLA/TP: 34%; PLGA75/TP: 25%; PLGA65/TP: 18%). By replacing the PLA carrier to PLGA, ca. 15% more active substance can be encapsulated in the core (PLA/TP: 65%; PLGA65/TP: 80%).

A protein-polysaccharide-based potential nanocarrier system have been developed via a simple, one-step preparation protocol without the use of long-term heating and the utilization of hardly removable crosslinking agents, surfactants, and toxic organic solvents. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first which summarizes in detail the pH-dependent quantitative relationship between the bovine serum albumin (BSA) and hyaluronic acid (HyA) confirmed by several physico-chemical techniques. The formation of colloidal complex nanoconjugates with average diameter of ca. 210-240 nm is strongly depend on the pH and the applied BSA:HyA mass ratio. Particle charge titrations studies strongly support the core-shell type structure, where the BSA core is covered by a thick HyA shell. Besides the optimization of these conditions, the drug encapsulation capacity and the dissolution profiles have been also studied for ibuprofen (IBU) and 2-picolinic acid (2-PA) as model drugs.

In this work, we firstly presented a simple encapsulation method to prepare thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B₁)-loaded asolectin-based liposomes with average hydrodynamic diameter of ca. 225 and 245 nm under physiological and acidic conditions, respectively. In addition to the optimization of the sonication and magnetic stirring times used for size regulation, the effect of the concentrations of both asolectin carrier and initial vitamin B₁ on the entrapment efficiency (EE %) was also investigated. Thermoanalytical measurements clearly demonstrated that after the successful encapsulation, only weak interactions were discovered between the carriers and the drug molecules. Moreover, the dissolution profiles under physiological (pH = 7.40) and gastric conditions (pH = 1.50) were also registered and the release profiles of our liposomal B₁ system were compared with the dissolution profile of the pure drug solution and a manufactured tablet containing thiamin hydrochloride as active ingredient. The release curves were evaluated by nonlinear fitting of six different kinetic models. The best goodness of fit, where the correlation coefficients in the case of all three systems were larger than 0.98, was reached by application of the well-known second-order kinetic model. Based on the evaluation, it was estimated that our liposomal nanocarrier system shows 4.5-fold and 1.5-fold larger drug retention compared to the unpackaged vitamin B₁ under physiological conditions and in artificial gastric juice, respectively.