In vitro study of intestinal epithelial interaction with engineered oil in water nanoemulsions conveying curcumin

The development of innovative nano-bio-encapsulation systems continues to be an area of intense activity as the demand of improved delivery systems is constantly increasing in several fields including nanomedicine. For this purpose, an important goal is carrying out appropriate engineering of the surface of these nanocarriers to satisfy the organ target features for an effective in situ release and elucidate the mechanism of action which most of the time is neglected. Here, an oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsion coated with a polysaccharide layer film - i.e. a glycol chitosan modified with a thiol moiety - was used as nanocarrier to convey a promising poorly water-soluble nature based drug, curcumin. The final nanocarrier was completely bio-compatible and bio-stable. We investigated the enhancement of the effect of curcumin loaded in our system across monolayers of intestinal epithelial cells CaCo-2 in Transwell culture. Such in vitro platform resulted suitable to evaluate the functionality of the proposed nanocarrier and its adhesion towards the mucosal epithelial layer and, as applicative example, to investigate the anti-inflammatory effects exerted by the encapsulation of curcumin.