Improved cardioprotective effects of hesperidin solid lipid nanoparticles prepared by supercritical antisolvent technology

Doxorubicin (DOX) is commonly used for the treatment of many types of cancers but its cardiotoxicity, owing to free radical formation, limits its clinical use. Hesperidin (HES), a flavanone glycoside, has been shown to exert multiple pharmacological actions including cardioprotective effects. Herein, we aim to formulate HES loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) using supercritical antisolvent (SAS) technology to improve the oral delivery of HES. Process parameters were optimized to produce small size (175.3 +/- 3.6 nm) HES-SLNs with high encapsulation efficiency (87.6 +/- 3.8 %). DSC and XRD showed that HES is amorphously dispersed in SLNs. Compared to HES, HES-SLNs resulted in a nearly 20-fold increase in aqueous solubility and a nearly 5-fold increase in apparent permeability. Pharmacokinetics in rats revealed nearly 4.5-fold higher bioavailability of HES from SLN formulation compared to HES suspension. Data showed that HES-SLN significantly attenuated DOX-induced cardiotoxicity through lowering creatine kinase-muscle/brain, cardiac troponin I and improving histopathological scores as compared to the DOX group. HES-SLN also decreased malondialdehyde, increased catalase and superoxide dismutase of rats' heart to levels relatively comparable to control. Marked reductions in caspase-3 were also observed following HES-SLN treatment. Conclusively, these results describe a cardioprotective effect for HES-SLN against DOX-induced cardiotoxicity likely facilitated via suppression of oxidative stress and apoptosis.