Polymersomes as nanocarriers of vitamin D3: morphological and in vitro characterization

Abstract

Vitamin D exerts pleiotropic effects in the body, mainly in the mineral homeostasis as well as extra-skeletal actions. Deficiency of vitamin D is very frequent and its supplementation might be needed. In this work, a novel nanocarrier for vitamin D3 based on polymersomes is developed. The polymersomes were prepared by self-assembly of previously synthesized triblock copolymer including vitamin D3 or oil red, as model drug, and characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and dynamic light scattering (DLS), and its stability and entrapment efficiency were analyzed. The incorporation of the drugs produces an increase in the average size with a monomodal distribution of this, with high stability and entrapment efficiency. Vitamin D3 encapsulated in the polymersomes does not promote modifications at the hydrophilic-hydrophobic interface level as was shown by generalized polarization (GP) studies. In addition, cytotoxicity and biocompatibility studies using murine macrophage RAW 264.7 and bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) show good biocompatibility without evidence of cytotoxicity under our tested conditions. Thus, the novel designed nanocarriers could be promising as delivery system for vitamin D3.