Amorphous silibinin nanoparticles loaded into porous starch to enhance remarkably its solubility and bioavailability in vivo.

In the present study, the silibinin (SLB) was loaded into porous starch (PS) in the form of nanoparticles (SNPS) by the liquid antisolvent precipitation (LAP) method, so as to improve its solubility and bioavailability. Firstly, the different experimental parameters on drug loading (DL) of the SLB in the LAP process were optimized through the single-factor experiments. Under the optimum conditions, the DL and the encapsulation efficiency (EE) of the SNPS were 9.49 ± 0.37 % and 89.93 ± 0.64 %, respectively. Compared with free SLB and SLB nanoparticles (SN), the SNPS had a higher solubility, and was about 180.81 ± 5.32 μg/mL in artificial gastric juice (AGJ) and was about 88.91 ± 4.14 μg/mL in artificial intestinal juice (AIJ), respectively. The in vitro release study demonstrated a slow and sustained ± release of SLB from the SNPS with the SN and free SLB as controls. The pharmacokinetic results showed that the Cmax and AUC(0-t) of the SNPS (87.71 ± 7.24 μg/L, 439.55 ± 8.76 μg/L*h) increased when compared with the SN (60.31 ± 8.98 μg/L, 206.51 ± 12.24 μg/L*h) and free SLB (26.08 ± 1.43 μg/L, 102.63 ± 7.15 μg/L*h), showing its ability to improve SLB's pharmacokinetic properties.