In this project, nanotechnology will be applied to the development of nanoformulations of extracts from natural products, such as essential oils. The formulation will be opportunely designed to enhance properties and effectiveness of essential oils in order to widen their application in pharmaceutical, cosmetics or food fields. To this end, different formulations and production processes will be evaluated with the final aim of maximizing the loading capacity of the formulation while maintaining unaltered the chemical composition of the essential oils. The majority of the techniques employed for the preparation of nanosystems, involve heating or solvent evaporation steps, which may lead to volatilisation and/or degradation of components of an essential oil, thus influencing its final composition and activity. For this reason, in this work special attention will be paid to the careful characterization of selected essential oils before and after nanoencapulation. The chemical profile of the extract will be traced to verify the possible or non-alteration of its chemical composition, in order to correlate the formulation constitution with its biological activity. So far, this aspect has not been much investigated. Many publications do not report any analytical assay generally assuming that the encapsulation does not involve any change in the composition of the extract. Therefore, the main endpoint of this project consists in the evaluation of the effect of formulation technology on the biological activity of essential oils in general and Lavandula x intermedia (lavandin) essential oil in particular. Different formulations will be designed and developed for lavandin essential oil, which possesses an interesting antibacterial activity. Therefore, all the formulations of lavandin essential oil will be evaluated in terms of physical-chemical properties, but also for the effect of the formulation technology on the composition and antibacterial activity of the essential oil.
In this project encapsulation in nanocarriers is proposed for its capability of improving the stability, water solubility, and efficacy of extracts of natural products in general and essential oil in particular. Essential oils have various critical challenges, which hindered their effective application in pharmaceutic, cosmetic and food field. The lipophilic and volatile components of essential oils are susceptible to polymerization and oxidative deterioration during storage that may change the functional composition of active constituents as well as their biological properties. Several reports have demonstrated that the application of nanotechnology to develop encapsulated essential oil formulations could enhance their effectiveness. Therefore, the recent advancement in nanotechnology offers great opportunity to develop novel carrier agents for the delivery and control release of essential oils with enhanced chemical, oxidative and thermal stability. Although, nanoencapsulation is one of the promising tools for effective delivery of essential oils, the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the composition of essential oils after their entrapment into nanocarriers-based formulations are yet poorly explored. Hence, the impact of the formulation process on the composition of the essential oils need to be carefully investigated before their effective application. In fact, a crucial and not very considered and investigated point in the realization of formulations of natural products, concerns the verification of the conservation of the properties of the substances present in the extracts. In this regard, it is essential to trace the chemical profile of the extract before and after the formulation to verify the possible or non-alteration of the chemical composition. The different preparation techniques of formulations are characterized by several passages including heating which could alter the chemical composition of the extract due to loss of the more volatile compounds. In light of this, a qualitative-quantitative control of the extract is necessary before and after the formulation in order to correlate the composition of the formulation with its biological activity. Therefore, to finalize a controlled formulation it is very important to verify the loss or the possible reduction of the analytes through the quantification of the pure extract and the extract after its encapsulation in nanosystems. So far this aspect has not been much investigated. Many publications do not report any analytical assay assuming that the encapsulation does not involve any change in the content of natural compounds in the extract. Therefore, the main endpoint of this project is the evaluation of the effect of the applied formulation technologies on the biological activity of essential oils. To reach such objective, Lavandula x intermedia (lavandin) essential oil will be used as a model.