International Journal of Pharmaceutics   2016 年 511 卷 1 期

2016.09.10

Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) to form a controlled nanostructure are a new generation of lipid nanoparticles. In addition to formulation and particle surface properties, particle size had great influence for overcoming gastrointestinal (GI) barriers on the oral drug delivery of lipid based nanoparticles. In the present study, we investigated the effect of size on oral drug delivery for NLCs. The NLCs with different particle sizes (NLCs??100??nm, NLCs??200??nm and NLCs??300??nm) were prepared by using solvent evaporation method and the coumarin-6 (C6) or DiO/DiI was loaded in the nanoparticles as the fluorescence probe. The MTT assay indicated that both blank NLCs and C6-loaded NLCs displayed relatively low toxicity towards Caco-2 cells. Cellular uptake mechanisms of NLCs with different sizes were found to be similar and governed by active endocytosis, clathrin- and caveolae-mediated process. However, the smaller nanoparticle (NLC??“100??nm) showed higher uptake efficiency in Caco-2 cell (P??