The key role of nanocarriers in improving the pharmacological properties of commonly used drugs is recognized worldwide. It is also known that in the development of new effective nanocarriers the use of targeting moieties integrated on their surface is essential. Herein, we propose a nanocarrier based on an oil in water nanoemulsion coated with a membranotropic peptide derived from the glycoprotein H of Herpes simplex virus 1, known as gH625, in order to reduce endolysosomal accumulation and to enhance cytosolic localization. In addition, we show an enhanced anti-inflammatory activity of curcumin, a bioactive compound isolated from the Curcuma longa plant, when loaded into our engineered nanocarriers. This effect is a consequence of a higher uptake combined with a high curcumin preservation exerted by the active nanocapsules compared to control ones. When loaded into our nanocapsules, indeed, curcumin molecules are directly internalized into the cytosol rather than into lysosomes. Further, in order to extend the in vitro experimental setting with a more complex model and to explore the possibility to use our nanocarriers for further biological applications, we tested their performance in a 3D sprouting angiogenesis model. Finally, we show promising preliminary in vivo results by assessing the anti-inflammatory properties of the proposed nanocarrier.

The stabilization of oil in water nano-emulsions by means of a polymer coating is extremely important; it prolongs the shelf life of the product and makes it suitable for a variety of applications ranging from nutraceutics to cosmetics and pharmaceutics. To date, an effective methodology to assess the best formulations in terms of thermodynamic stability has yet to be designed. Here, we perform a complete physicochemical characterization based on isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) compared to conventional dynamic light scattering (DLS) to identify polymer concentration domains that are thermodynamically stable and to define the degree of stability through thermodynamic functions depending upon any relevant parameter affecting the stability itself, such as type of polymer coating, droplet distance, etc. For instance, the method was proven by measuring the energetics in the case of two different biopolymers, chitosan and poly-L-lysine, and for different concentrations of the emulsion coated with poly-L-lysine.

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In the last decade, there has been a growing interest on chitosan-based nanomaterials. Chitosan is a polymer exceptionally versatile, biodegradable, biocompatible and with good capacity of mucoadhesivity and permeation-enhancing effect. These features make chitosan a perfect material for the fabrication of polymeric nanoparticles for a variety of applications in the field of pharmaceutics, nutraceutics or cosmetics. This paper discuss on the role of isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) in the creation of protocols for the preparation of chitosan-based nanoparticles, as well as the role of calorimetry to find chitosan-coating conditions to offer to nanoparticles the desired proprieties for the delivery of drugs, biologics and vaccines. Although several papers of the current literature show the employment of ITC in chitosan-based nanosystems, most of them lack a thermodynamic description. Here, we highlight on two types of systems: chitosan-coating nanoparticles and chitosan-containing nanoparticles. The thermodynamic properties and the energetic aspects of the overall interactions are discussed