Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) are drug carriers offering clear advantages over other existing methods for nanoparticle preparation such as ease of handling and faster production process without any sophisticated equipment. The lipids used are generally biocompatible, biodegradable with less toxicity compared to polymeric nanoparticles. The objective of this work was to prepare SLNs with optimized physical properties, thereby further drug loading and optimizing SLNs targeting could be obtained. For that purpose, different lipids with various concentrations were tried: Precirol®5ATO, Compritol®888 ATO, glyceryl monostearate and palmitic acid. The chosen surfactants were Tween 80 and Brij®78. The obtained plain SLNs varied in size from 156 nm to >1 µm with Tween 80 and from 107 nm to >1 µm with Brij®78. The PDI values with both surfactants varied from 0.28 to 1. The recorded zeta potential values (ζ) ranged from -3.6 to -30.8 with both surfactants. The largest particles were obtained with palmitic acid; hence it was excluded from further studies. The average particle sizes ranged from 44 to 914 nm and the PDI varied from 0.17 to 0.67. However, the ζ values didn’t change considerably. So it can be concluded that SLNs with a reasonable particle size can be loaded with a drug for targeting.
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