Abstract
Catanionic vesicles are emerging interesting structures for bioapplications. They self-generate by a pairing of oppositely charged ionic surfactants that assemble into hollow structures. Specifically, the anionic-cationic surfactant pair assumes a double-tailed zwitterionic behavior. In this work, the multilamellar-to-unilamellar thermal transition of several mixed aqueous systems, with a slight excess of the anionic one, were investigated. Interestingly, it was found that the anionic counterion underwent a dissociation as a consequence of a temperature increase, leading to the mentioned thermal transition. The present work proposed the spectroscopic techniques, specifically multinuclear NMR and PGSTE (pulsed gradient stimulated echo), as a key tool to study such systems, with high accuracy and effectiveness, while requiring a small amount of the sample. The results presented herein evidence encouraging perspectives, forecasting the application of the studied vesicular nanoreservoirs, for e.g., drug delivery.
Highlights
Catanionic vesicles can be developed, thanks to the self-assembly of oppositely charged ionic amphiphiles, leading to the formation of colloidal hollow structures
The results presented evidence encouraging perspectives, forecasting the application of the studied vesicular nanoreservoirs, for e.g., drug delivery
With reference to Equation (1), catanionic vesicles effectively self-assembled at R 1
Summary
Catanionic vesicles can be developed, thanks to the self-assembly of oppositely charged ionic amphiphiles, leading to the formation of colloidal hollow structures. The above-mentioned zwitterionic double-chained structure self-generates by the association of oppositely charged single-tailed surfactants [1,2,3] Nowadays, these vesicular systems are of increasing interest as they are widely employed in the pharmaceutical/biotechnological field (e.g., targeted gene therapy, medicated syrups, eye drop products, etc.) [4,5,6,7]. Component Sodium decyl sulfate (SdS) Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) Cetylpyridinium bromide (CPB) These kinds of systems and their investigation through NMR techniques propose an elegant approach to encompass the use of a very small amount of the bioactive molecules to be included, both for basic research and future scale-up. To the best of our knowledge, this report represents the first strategic approach of multinuclear NMR applied as a powerful tool to optimize and study soft nanoshuttles for innovative use in the future use in the bioactive molecules delivery field
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