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The trans-resveratrol (t-res), a non-flavonoid polyphenol extracted from different plants, has recently earned interest for application on the skin for different applications. In this work, the potential of nanocarriers, namely transfersomes and ethanol-containing vesicles, to deliver t-res into/through the skin was investigated. Thus, transfersomes with different surfactants, namely polysorbate 80 (Tw80), sodium cholate (SC) and sodium deossicholate (SDC) and ethanol-containing vesicles with different lipid composition, namely soy phosphatidylcholine (SPC) and cholesterol (chol), encapsulating t-res were prepared and characterized. The nanocarriers had a mean diameter ranging between 83 and 116 nm with a high t-res encapsulation efficiency (≥ 70%). Moreover, cytotoxicity as well as the inhibition of production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and lipid peroxidation, following incubation of H(2)O(2)-stimulated human keratinocyte (HaCaT) with t-res, as free or encapsulated into the nanocarriers, were investigated. Only blank nanocarriers containing Tw80 or ethanol were cytotoxic and led to increase of ROS, but this effect was not observed when using nanocarriers encapsulating t-res. Finally, permeation studies on porcine skin carried out on Franz diffusion cells, showed that only ethanol-containing vesicles based SPC were able to promote t-res permeation through the skin.

In this work, curcumin (CURC)-encapsulating nanoparticles (NPs), made up of an amphiphilic blend of poloxamers and PLGA (PPC NPs) at different polymer concentrations, were prepared by nanoprecipitation. CURC was preliminarily complexed with (2-hydroxypropyl)-β-cyclodextrin (HPβCD) to improve its loading efficiency. The formation of host-guest complexes of CURC with HPβCD (CD-CURC) was confirmed by means of 1HNMR studies and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Nanoprecipitation allowed to obtain NPs with a small size (90–120 nm depending on the polymer concentration), a narrow size distribution and stable in water for 30 days at 4 °C and in RPMI-1640 cell culture medium up to 72 h at 37 °C. The in vitro release of CD-CURC, sustained up to 5 days, was governed mainly by a diffusive mechanism. It was also found that the produced NPs were efficiently internalized by mesothelioma cells (MSTO-211H) in the cytoplasmic space, at an extent strongly dependent on NP size and polydispesity index, therefore pointing at the importance of NP preparation method in improving their uptake.