Our study highlights the importance of the gastrointestinal lipolysis and the associated phenomena such as the dilution of chyme by biliary and pancreatic secretions in vivo, on the solubilisation of poorly water-soluble drugs formulated with lipid-based excipients.

No abstract

The lipases with distinct substrate specificities used in this study were found to be sensitive probes of phase transitions occurring upon Labrasol(®) dilution. In addition to their use for developing in vitro digestion models, these enzymes are interesting tools for the characterization of self-emulsifying lipid-based formulations.

No abstract

Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) are lipid nanocarriers aimed to the delivery of drugs characterized by a low bioavailability, such as poorly water-soluble drugs and peptides or proteins. The oral administration of these lipid nanocarriers implies the study of their lipolysis in presence of enzymes that are commonly involved in dietary lipid digestion in the gastrointestinal tract. In this study, a comparison between two methods was performed: on one hand, the lipase/co-lipase assay, commonly described in the literature to study the digestion of lipid nanocarriers, and on the other hand, the lipolysis test using porcine pancreatic extract and the pH-stat apparatus. This pancreatic extract contains both the pancreatic lipase and carboxyl ester hydrolase (CEH) that permit to mimic in a biorelevant manner the duodenal digestive lipolysis. The test was performed by means of a pH-stat apparatus to work at constant pH, 5.5 or 6.25, representing respectively the fasted or fed state pH conditions. The evolution of all acylglycerol entities was monitored during the digestion by sampling the reaction vessel at different time points, until 60 min, and the lipid composition of the digest was analyzed by gas chromatography. SLN and NLC systems obtained with long-chain saturated acylglycerols were rapidly and completely digested by pancreatic enzymes. The pH-stat titration method appears to be a powerful technique to follow the digestibility of these solid lipid-based nanoparticles.