The preparation of lipospheres for the topical delivery of alfa-hydroxyacids

Lipospheres represent a recent type of fat-based encapsulation system developed for parenteral and topical delivery of bioactive compounds. They consisted of water-dispersible solid dispersion microparticles of particle size between 0.2 and 100 micron composed of a solid dispersion hydrophobic fat core stabilized by one monolayer of phospholipid. In this regard, the present study describes the preparation and the characterization of lipospheres for the topical delivery of glicolic acid in order to reduce the skin damage and improve the effectiveness of this compound when used as anti-aging agent.The lipospheres were obtained by a melt method using tristearin and soybean phosphatidylcholine or soybean hydrogenated phosphatidylcholine. The lipospheres, recovered from the lipophilic phase of O/W or W/O/W emulsions, showed spherical shape with surface morphological features depending on the formulation variables and particle size ranging from 1 to 10 micron.