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Temperature/pH-Responsive Hexagonal Liquid Crystal for Curcumin Release
Zhen Li1, Li Zhang1, Xilian Wei2
1College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science , Shandong Normal University , Jinan 250014 , China.
Abstract:
The temperature/pH-responsive hexagonal liquid crystal constructed in a polyoxyethylene (20) sorbitan monooleate (Tween 80)/water-soluble chitosan (WCS)/ethyl oleate (EtOL)/H2O system was used to encapsulate curcumin. We discuss the effect of temperature and pH on the in vitro release of curcumin and the rheological properties of a curcumin-encapsulated liquid crystal. The drug-encapsulated hexagonal phase containing relatively high WCS content (9.9 wt %) exhibited good temperature response, as indicated by three phase transformation temperature obtained by temperature scanning. The viscosity of the drug-encapsulated hexagonal phase decreased as the temperature rose, which exhibited diverse constancy and temperature sensitivity. Also, the in vitro release rate of curcumin increased as the temperature increased. After introducing WCS, the release rate of curcumin decreased obviously the pH dependence, where the release of curcumin was slower as the pH was higher. All of the results indicated that the temperature/pH-responsive hexagonal liquid crystals were proposed to be potential slow release carriers to deliver curcumin.
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