Curcumin Loaded Ethosomal Vesicular Drug Delivery System for the Treatment of Melanoma Skin Cancer

Abstract

Curcumin has an excellent safety profile having various pleiotropic actions, including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antitumoral, anticancer, and antimicrobial activities, with the potential for neuroprotective activity but the poor oral bioavailability limits its use as oral dosage form. The purpose of this study was to formulate and evaluate the transdermal drug delivery system of Ethosomes containing curcumin, a potent anti-cancer drug. Study on various formulation excipients revealed that all the excipients shown some variation which affected the vesicle size, zeta potential, PDI and entrapment efficiency. Batch prepared with 10 % of soya lecithin, 4.5 % of ethanol and 10% of cholesterol showed maximum entrapment efficiency of 81.2±3.12.In in vitro drug permeation studies using dialysis bag, the samples withdrawn in equal time intervals shown more drug release from the dialysis bag in comparison with that of inhouse paclitaxel gel which conform that the curcumin loaded ethosomal gel is a better formulation for the further studies. In ex vivo, permeation study using pork ear skin, curcumin loaded ethosomal gel showed the greater drug deposition on the skin > 60 % in 12 hrs for the better curability for the melanoma. Whereas inhouse paclitaxel gel shown < 60 % of drug deposition in 12 h. The comparison of both ethosomal gel and inhouse paclitaxel gel reveals that ethosomal gel shown maximum release within 12 hrs in both in vitro and ex vivo studies, which can be taken for the further in vitro cell line and in vivo study.