NATURAL LIPID-BASED NANOFORMULATIONS WITH INTRINSIC ANTIFUNGAL THERAPEUTIC ACTIVITY

Lately, fungi have acquired pharmacological multi-resistance due to socio-environmental conditions, resulting in an important emergency in public health. The use of nanotechnology in the development of new treatments is a very promising alternative. The present work described the development of biofunctional formulations based on natural nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) prepared by hot emulsification-ultrasonication technique with antifungal intrinsic therapeutic activity. These systems were based on different structural and bioactive lipid matrices and stabilized by biosurfactants that loaded essential oils. These formulations were evaluated in terms of particle size (nm) and distribution (PDI), Zeta potential (mV) and nanoparticle concentration (part/mL), and their physicochemical stability were monitored for 1 year (25 ° C), ensuring the shelf-time. Then, their supramolecular arrangement was elucidated by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) exhibiting suitable compatibility among the excipients. Finally, the in vitro antifungal activity was determined against different species, such as: Aspergillus fumigatus, Candida albicans and Trichophyton rubrum. It was observed that these formulations exhibited therapeutic activity against all the fungus species, even after 48 h of NLC treatment at low concentrations. Such achieve represent an important advance against fungal drug multi-resistance to be further applied in health and agriculture