Development, characterization, and in vitro dissolution of self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) for an effective oral delivery of quercetin

Quercetin has been known to have antimicrobial activity. The low solubility causes the bioavailability of quercetin to be reduced, reducing its effectiveness of quercetin. Self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) is able to be used to increase the bioavailability of quercetin. The purposes of this study were to investigate the optimum SNEDDS components' concentration, namely the oil, cosurfactant, and surfactant which produce SNEDDS with good characteristics, and to determine the dissolution of quercetin SNEDDS preparations. Optimization of the components that make up SNEDDS is done by applying the method of simplex lattice design using the Design Expert software. Quercetin SNEDDS was characterized by testing the transmittance percentage, time of emulsification, average droplet size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, and validated in vitro dissolution. The upper and lower borders of the SNEDDS component concentrations selected for oleic acid, polysorbate 80, and polyethylene glycol 400 respectively were 10-20%, 70-80%, and 10-20%. The optimum formula for SNEDDS contained oleic acid, polysorbate 80, and PEG400 of 10%, 73.2%, and 16.8%, respectively. The transmittance percentage, average droplet size, polydispersity index, and zeta potential values were 89.97 +/- 3.31; 116.20 +/- 0.44; 0.25 +/- 0.06; and -30.47 +/- 0.12. The results of in vitro dissolution illustrated that the percentage of dissolution value of quercetin SNEDDS was superior to that of plain quercetin (p<0.05). Quercetin SNEDDS with good characteristics has the potential to be developed as a quercetin delivery system with high drug bioavailability.