Spray Drying of Asiatic Acid-Palm Oil in Maltodextrin: Improving the Nanoemulsion Characteristics

Combination of Asiatic acid (AA) and palm oil (PO) is promising to be developed. However, both have low solubility, low absorption, rapid metabolism, low bioavailability, and high oxidation which need to be improved in order to provide good activity. Thus, nanoemulsion formulation followed by spray drying were optimized to enhance the physical and chemical characteristics of the products. Lecithin (L), poloxamer188 (P), span80 (S), tween80 (T) were used as surfactants to form nanoemulsion and maltodextrin (M) was used as spray dried matrix component. Different amounts of maltodextrin were optimized at low (M1), medium (M2), and high (M3) levels. Characterization and evaluation were carried out on products, including particle size, morphology, product recovery (yield), drug content, solubility, and dissolution rate. The characterization results showed that nanoemulsion was successfully prepared and spray dried microparticles with a good physical form were obtained. The microparticles could be rapidly redispersed to form size of 149.0 – 271.1 nm with the zeta potential value lower than -30mV. Both physical and chemical stability of the microparticles showed no significant difference after 6-month storage. Lecithin-Tween-medium Maltodextrin (LTM2) formula showed the most optimum results with good physical characteristics and a high dissolution rate. In vitro release profile of LTM2 showed area under the curve (AUC) and dissolution efficiency at 180min values of 14725.10 ± 480.60 and 81.81 ± 2.67%, respectively. It could be concluded that spray dried microparticles of AA-PO nanoemulsion formulation improved the physical and chemical characteristics of both compounds presumably suitable good bioavailability and activity.