Porous Lactose as a Novel Ingredient Carrier for the Improvement of Quercetin Solubility In Vitro

In this work, quercetin was loaded in the highly-porous lactose via the adsorption of quercetin molecules in ethanol. The method aims to improve the quercetin solubility and the loading capacity of lactose. The method relates to the synthesis of the highly-porous lactose with a particle size of ∼35 μm, a mean pore width of ∼30 nm, a BET surface area of 35.0561 ± 0.4613 m2/g, and a BJH pore volume of ∼0.075346 cc/g. After the quercetin loading in ethanol, BET surface area and BJH pore volume of porous lactose were reduced to 28.8735 ± 0.3526 m2/g and 0.073315 cc/g, respectively. The reduction rate was based on the quercetin loading efficiency of highly-porous lactose. DSC analysis and XRD analysis suggest that the sediments of quercetin in the nanopores of porous lactose are crystalline. FTIR spectroscopy results suggest that there is no significant interaction between quercetin and lactose. The highly-porous lactose had a higher loading efficiency of 20.3% (w/w) compared to the α-lactose (with 5.2% w/w). The release rates of quercetin from the highly-porous lactose tablets were faster compared to the conventional α-lactose carrier.