Preparation and Evaluation of Chitosan-Alginate Microparticles for Luteolin Entrapment

Luteolin (LUT) is a natural polyphenol water-insoluble compound. LUT-loaded microparticles (MPs) were prepared by using the ionic gelation and polyelectrolyte complexation technique method. LUT-MPs were prepared using Alginate (Alg), chitosan (Cht), tripolyphosphate, and LUT. The prepared LUT-MPs were evaluated for encapsulation efficiency, percentage yield, morphology, in vitro drug release, FTIRS, and antioxidant activity study. Formulated LUT-MPs showed size ranging (2 to 4nm) and the SEM image of LUT-MPs shows a smooth spherical surface for Cht and Cht/Alg-MPs is dimple with few spherical. FTIRS confirmed that there was a slight interaction between pure Luteolin and the excipients. The formulations also showed significant variability in the encapsulation efficiency (78.3±0.4, and 81.2±2.1) for Cht and Cht/Alg respectively. Formulated LUT-MPs has Percentage yield of 77.7% and 74.4% for Cht and Cht/Alg respectively. The in vitro results revealed enhanced drug release. The formulation LT-MPs (Cht, and Cht/Alg) showed the maximum drug release of 67.4±0.6, and 78.9±0.9% respectively, while pure LUT showed only 20.1 ± 1.21% in 24hrs. The release data revealed significant variation (p 0.005) in the release pattern. The enhanced drug release from LUT-MPs was achieved due to the enhanced solubility of LUT in the presence of the polymers. The antioxidant activity results proved that LT-MPs showed greater activity compared to pure LUT at 0.5mg/ml concentration, the radical scavenging effect of Chitosan, and Chitosan/Alginate LUT-MPs was 78.6±0.9% and 81.6±1.8% respectively compared to pure LUT 76.3±0.7%. Thus, it can be concluded that LUT-MPs formulation can enhanced bioavailability, solubility, stability and drug release of LUT.