Abstract
The protozoan parasite Ichthyophthirius multifiliis infects a wide range of freshwater fish species worldwide and causes Ichthyophthiriasis, also called white spot disease, resulting in mass mortality and great economic losses to global aquaculture. Despite more and more chemotherapeutic drugs being found effective against I. multifiliis, the native poorly solubility for most hydrophobic compounds including natural products caused activity decline and even loss, limiting the further application in the control of aquatic animal diseases. The concern about water-insoluble drugs accentuates the urgent need for solubilization technologies and methods. Here we propose a nano-complexation technology to overcome the concerns of natural products' insolubility. Based on this technology, the magnolol-nanocomplexes were successfully prepared with various mass ratios of magnolol to peptone. The data of particle size and PDI revealed that magnolol particle size was decreased from micro to nanoscale after complexation with peptone, with enhanced water solubility. Images obtained from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) visually displayed the morphological characteristics of magnolol nanoparticles after complexation with peptone and the average particle size was calculated as 63.69–82.84 nm using the ImageJ software. Furthermore, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were employed to investigate the complexation mechanism, which suggested that the hydrogen bond interactions were formed between magnolol and peptone that contributed to the stabilization for magnolol-nanocomplex. Lastly, the antiparasitic efficacy of magnolol-nanocomplex was both significantly improved after complexation with peptone against I. multifiliis infection at all life stages in vitro and in vivo. These findings indicated that animal proteins, peptone, could be used as a nanocarrier to improve the water solubility and antiparasitic effects of natural product magnolol. Altogether, this study first proposes a promising strategy to enhance the solubility and activity of hydrophobic drugs against aquatic animal diseases, which might be hoping to be further applicate in the aquaculture industry.
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