Antioxidant effect of cardanol in mixed nanoformulations with pluronic

The use of nontoxic, biocompatible and very stable surfactants in the design and preparation of nanoformulations for drug delivery and food industry applications is a quickly expanding area. In this framework, Pluronics are a well explored class of triblock copolymers presenting hydrophilic poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and hydrophobic poly(propylene oxide) (PPO) in an A-B-A structure (PEO-PPO-PEO) with different PEO/PPO unit ratio. However, polyethers can undergo oxidation with unpredicted concerns. We describe here the design and characterization, in physiological conditions at 37 °C, of mixed formulations of Pluronic F98 or F108 with 5 or 10% of cardanol (or tert-butyl cardanol), a natural antioxidant that is able to significantly reduce (up to 80%) the detrimental peroxidation. A systematic study will be necessary to fully address the toxicity of these nanosystems but our preliminary MTT assays on fibroblasts are in favour of their benign nature.