Design, characterization and optimization of a novel liposomal based food supplement against chronic fatigue syndrome

Abstract

In today’s society, people’s interest against health care is growing every day. On a health- concerned population, food supplements and nutraceuticals are products with an increasing interest among the global community. This thesis arises as an industrial doctorate project, with the purpose of strengthen the bioavailability and effectivity of the active substances in Reconnect®, a current product commercialized by Vitae Health Innovation, S.L.

Coencapsulation of different actives has been widely studied and reported on the last decades, and concretely liposomes have already been used for the encapsulation of the isolated antioxidant actives phosphatidylserine (PS), coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and vitamin C, but not as a combinatory oral therapy. Coadministration of these actives on a combinatory therapy within the liposomal encapsulation technology may provide a wide and complete supplementation with promising results on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients or people suffering from general fatigue, among others. Therefore, the design and development of a novel liposomal-based food supplement against chronic fatigue syndrome is of great industrial interest.

This thesis is structured on different parts. On first place, the development and validation of a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the simultaneous quantification of CoQ10, PS, and vitamin C was essential for the analysis and characterization of the selected drugs.

The second part of the thesis, separated in two chapters, is focused on the design, characterization and optimization of two methods of liposomal production, one based on the thin-film method, being the main axis of the thesis, while the other method based on microfluidic technology was developed on a short research stay within Prof. Jing Fan’s research group of Complex Fluids and Soft Materials at the City College of New York – City University of New York (CCNY – CUNY).

Finally, the third part is focused on the scaling up optimization of the most promising results of the liposomal formulation.