Exploration of Drug Science

Table 2. A summary of curcumin (CUR) encapsulation (or entrapment) efficiency percentage (EE%), particle size, distribution [polydispersity index (PDI)], particle concentration, and zeta (ζ) potential of CUR-loaded chitosan nanoparticle (CHS-NP) formulations.

Formulation	Sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP)-crosslinked CHS-NPs				Sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP)-crosslinked CHS-NPs
Formulation	T-1	T-2	T-3	T-4	S-1	S-2	S-3	S-4
Cross-linker level (mmol/mg CHS)	0.068	0.136	0.226	0.340	0.068	0.136	0.226	0.340
CUR loading (mg/mg NPs)	0.31	0.32	0.38	0.25	0.32	0.33	0.31	0.32
EE%	74	77	91	59	78	79	74	78
Particle size (nm) (mean ± SD)	283.6 ± 3.3	284.2 ± 21.0	226.6 ± 71.6	242.4 ± 21.2	264.2 ± 4.4	311.5 ± 15.2	276.3 ± 3.0	317.1 ± 1.3
PDI	0.28	0.24	0.14	0.16	0.2	0.1	0.13	0.1
D10 (nm)	137.3	149.7	152.5	140.7	144.8	203	167	204
D50 (nm)	231.6	249.2	237.3	225.6	241.7	292.5	261.5	301.4
D90 (nm)	507.5	475	372.2	364.6	399.1	445.1	409.5	449.5
NP concentration (NPs/mL) (mean ± SD)	2.0 × 10¹⁰ ± 1.08 × 10⁹	4.02 × 10¹⁰ ± 2.14 × 10⁹	3.11 × 10¹⁰ ± 1.91 × 10⁹	5.07 × 10¹⁰ ± 2.37 × 10⁹	2.81 × 10¹⁰ ± 2.02 × 10⁹	9.27 × 10¹⁰ ± 4.41 × 10⁹	2.05 × 10¹¹ ± 5.67 × 10⁹	1.04 × 10¹¹ ± 2.89 × 10⁹
ζ potential (mV)-CUR-loaded NPs (mean ± SD)	34.7 ± 0.7	31.1 ± 1.7	34.4 ± 3.6	32.2 ± 3.3	24.8 ± 1.35	30.8 ± 1.7	29.6 ± 2.3	29.0 ± 0.4
ζ potential (mV)-unloaded (blank) NPs (mean ± SD)	26.8 ± 3.4	26.3 ± 5.0	23.6 ± 2.7	32.1 ± 5.2	15.6 ± 1.6	23.1 ± 3.0	25.0 ± 2.2	34.6 ± 1.9

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Supplementary materials

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Declarations

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the professional assistance and technical support of the staff at Ilze Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology.

Author contributions

IE: Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft. DY: Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing—review & editing. SBS: Conceptualization, Writing—review & editing. ACS: Conceptualization, Supervision, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. All authors read and approved the submitted version.

Conflicts of interest

Amnon C. Sintov, who is the Editorial Board Member of Exploration of Drug Science, had no involvement in the decision-making or review process of this manuscript. The other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent to publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

The data that supports the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Funding

This research received funding from B.G. Negev (BGN) (the tech-transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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