Abstract:

Polar lipid mols. such as glycerol monooleate (GMO) and polar solvent (usually water) can spontaneously organize in high order at the long-range distances while in the short-range, at at. distances, they are disordered. Liq. cryst. mesophases with a long-range order in one dimension are lamellar phases (L$\alpha$ ) while those showing two dimensional long-range order are known as hexagonal phases (HI and H2 for normal and reverse hexagonal) and those with three dimension long-range orders are lyotropic cubic phase (C). Hydrophobic effect with a variety of intra- and intermol. interactions, in combination with a no. of geometric packing constraints, are responsible for the degree of order. Addn. of guest mols. (solubilizates) to the liq. crystals can alter the structure according to specific mol. interaction between the GMO and the guest compd. that contributes to the surface area species. In our recent studied we have discovered that ternary blends of GMO, water and cosolvent can form unique structures. The focus of this presentation is on a new mesophase that was formed as a result of phase transformations. The new structure was eluted from lamellar, cubic, and hexagonal isotropic liq. phases in ternary systems. The new phase, termed by us the QL mesophase, is very unique since it is transparent liq. phase with long-range order. The QL phase was studied by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), self-diffusion NMR, DSC and cond. methods. The unique rheol. properties of a system totally fluid and yet non Newtonian will be discussed in view of the suggested structure of micellar discontinuous cubic phase. Microstructure data as well as solubilization data of several nutraceuticals mols. and their bioavailability advantages will be presented. [on SciFinder(R)]