Can a catanionic surfactant mixture act as a drug delivery vehicle?

Abstract

Surfactants can self-assemble in dilute aqueous solutions into a variety of microstructures, including micelles, vesicles, and bilayers. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in unilamellar vesicles, which are composed of a closed bilayer that separates an inner aqueous compartment from the outer aqueous environment. This interest is motivated by their potential to be applied as vehicles for active agents in drug delivery via several routes of administration. Active drug molecules can be encapsulated in the bilayer membrane if they are lipophilic or in the core of the vesicle if they are hydrophilic. Furthermore vesicles formed by mixing of cationic and anionic surfactants (so called ‘catanionic’ systems) can be used as models for biological membranes as they have low critical micelle concentration ( cmc ) and are highly biocompatible. In this work the formation of amino acid based mixed surfactant vesicles and their stabilization and biocompatibility were studied systematically using several instrumental techniques. Binary mixtures of the anionic sodium N -alkanoyl- l -sarcosinate, SAS and cationic cetyltrimethylammonium hydroxide (CTAOH) or dodecyltrimethylammonium hydroxide (DTAOH) surfactant was found to form high surface active and strong synergistic interaction in different compositions and concentrations. • Mixture of cationic and anionic surfactants (i.e., catanionic mixture) forms stable vesicles. • The vesicles can be used for pH-triggered drug delivery. • The vesicles can entrap the drug molecules to their inner aqueous core. • The catanionic vesicles are biocompatible in nature.