Biocompatible Lipid Nanoparticles as Carriers to Improve Curcumin Efficacy in Ovarian Cancer Treatment

Curcumin is a natural anti-cancer compound with proved efficacy on several human cancer cell lines. However, its clinical application has been limited due to its poor bioavailability. Nanoparticle-based drug delivery approaches could make curcumin dispersible in aqueous media, thus overtaking the limits of its low solubility. The aim of this study was to increase the bioavalaibility and the antitumoral activity of curcumin, by entrapping it into Nanostructured Lipid Carriers (NLCs). At this purpose here we described the preparation and technological characterization of three kinds of curcumin-loaded NLCs. The nanosystems allowed to achieve a controlled release of curcumin, being the amounts of curcumin released after 24 hrs from Compritol-Captex, Compritol-Miglyol and Compritol NLCs, respectively equal to 33, 28 and 18% w/w on the total entrapped curcumin. Considering the slower curcumin release profile, Compritol NLCs were chosen to perform successive "in vitro" studies on two different ovarian cancer cell lines. The results show that curcumin-loaded NLCs maintain antitumor activity, and reduce cell colony survival more effectively than free curcumin. As an example, the ability of A2780S cells to form colonies was inhibited after treatment with 5 ?M free curcumin by 50% ± 6, whereas, at the same concentration the delivery of curcumin with NLC significantly (p<0.05) inhibited colonies formation to approximately 88% ± 1, therefore potentiating the activity of curcumin to inhibit A2780S cell growth. The obtained results clearly suggest that the entrapment of curcumin into NLCs increases curcumin efficacy "in vitro", indicating the potential use of NLCs as curcumin delivery systems.