Deciphering the Role of Bilayer of a Niosome towards Controlling the Entrapment and Release of Dyes

Abstract

AbstractNiosomes are self‐assemblies of non‐ionic surfactants into vesicular structures, which mimic cell membranes in several aspects and potentially used as transdermal carriers for hydrophilic or hydrophobic drugs. However, controlling the amount of prescribed drug is absolutely important during transdermal delivery. The drug entrapment in a niosome, depends on several factors such as the bilayer arrangement, size and surface charge of a particular niosome. Hence, a systematic synthetic and spectroscopic study will convey the important information about drug entrapment and even controlling the entrapment, upon structural variation of the niosomes. In this report, we show that how the hydrophobic bilayer arrangement can be crucial to alter the molecular entrapment inside the niosome. For such study, niosomes are synthesized, which contain bilayers of different capacities. Entrapment and release studies are performed subsequently using common fluorophores: coumarin‐153 (a hydrophobic dye) and rhodamine 6G (a water loving dye). Raman Spectroscopy is extensively used to characterize the bilayer disorderness for the synthesized niosomes. Our study reveals, that the niosome with ordered bilayer can entrap the hydrophobic dye coumarin‐153 significantly more than the niosome containing a disordered bilayer. However, we have also identified that these entrapment efficiencies of the niosomes are reversed in a substantial way by the addition of ionic surfactants like CTAB, to the niosome.