Preparation, characterization and antibacterial property of naringin loaded PLGA nanospheres

Naringin is a predominant flavanone in grapefruit and shows a variety of biological effects such as antioxidative, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activity. However, its application in pharmaceutical field is limited by low water solubility, poor bioavailability and instability. To overcome the problem, naringin has been encapsulated in poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) polymer by emulsion-diffusion-evaporation method in this work. Moreover, naringin loaded PLGA nanospheres were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), dynamic light scatter method (DLS), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, UV-vis spectra and fluorescence spectra of DNA-EB competition displacement. The mean diameter of PLGA nanospheres and NRG/PLGA nanospheres was 123 +/- 25 nm and 137 +/- 30 nm, respectively. The drug encapsulation efficiency was 86.4% while the drug loading rate was 22.3%. The fluorescence spectra of the competitive DNA-binding experiments revealed that the functional activity of naringin was retained after loaded in PLGA. It is revealed that the initial burst effect happened in the initial 24 h and followed by sustained release lasting for 10 days. Moreover, the nanospheres exhibited strong antibacterial activity, and 99.9% of E. coli and S. aureus were killed when treated with naringin loaded PLGA nanospheres at the concentration of 0.2 mg mL-1 within 24 h. Furthermore, the viable cells remained only 48% when the concentration of NRG/PLGA nanospheres was 32 mu g mL-1 and NRG/PLGA nanospheres was important for inhibition of cancer cells. It is concluded that the stable naringin loaded PLGA nanospheres could have potential application in food industry and nanomedicine field.