Microemulsion composed of combination of skin beneficial oils as vehicle: Development of resveratrol-loaded microemulsion based formulations for skin care applications

Microemulsion can be a potential delivery vehicle to deliver skin care actives to deep skin layer for chronic skin care benefits. On top of skin care active, microemulsion vehicle composed of multiple skin beneficial oils can deliver additional skin care efficacies. In this study, microemulsions were developed using combinations of two skin beneficial oils, tea tree oil and medium chain triglyceride instead of single oil. For that, pseudo ternary phase diagrams were constructed on these oil combinations at different ratios of surfactant/co-surfactants. Ratio of oils and surfactant/co-surfactant combinations exhibited significant impact on the microemulsion region. A few compositions were selected from the single phase microemulsion regions of these phase diagrams for the preparation of resveratrol-loaded microemulsion and microemulsion gel formulations. The particle size of the resveratrol-loaded microemulsions were <50 nm. Cryogenic scanning electron microscope image clearly showed nano-droplets dispersed in continuous phase. Both physical and chemical stability of the formulations varied depending on their compositions, such as surfactant/co-surfactant combination and % total oil. The presence of chelating agent and anti-oxidant was also crucial to stabilize the formulations. The selected formulations demonstrated good physicochemical stability at 5 °C, 25 °C, and 40 °C/75 % RH (relative humidity) stability conditions. The results further showed that the % total oil and surfactant phase composition had huge influence on resveratrol release and skin permeation patterns from the microemulsion gels. In vitro skin permeation result indicated that the microemulsion gels can help resveratrol penetration into deep skin layer. Therefore, the developed resveratrol-loaded microemulsion gels can be utilized as skin care product with multiple skin care benefits.

Keywords: Combination of oils; Microemulsion; Phase diagram; Resveratrol; Topical formulation.