phyto-nanoemulsion containing tea leaves extract incorporated into a hydrogel-based peel-off mask formulation: development, antioxidant assay, and ex-vivo transport study

Background: tea leaves contain remarkable antioxidant compounds suitable for cosmetics formulation development targeting anti-aging purposes. however, due to its hydrophilicity, it faced the main hurdle, namely the permeation of the potential antioxidant compounds. nanoemulsion formulation offers the permeation improvement of water-soluble compounds therefore, this work purposed to formulate and develop the nanoemulsion formulation containing tea leaf extract incorporated into a peel-off mask formulation and an ex-vivo transport study. methods: the nanoemulsion formulation was developed according to self-nano emulsification. the optimization process was performed using a design of experiment to define optimized formulation based on quality target product profiles. dried green tea leaf extract (dgte) was obtained by lyophilizing the boiled water-based extract. antioxidant and phenolic content assays were also evaluated. the optimized formulation was incorporated into a hydrogel-based peel-off mask formulation. permeated polyphenol through a rat skin membrane was carried out along with deposited polyphenols in the skin membrane. results: the results indicated that dgte had powerful antioxidants with ic50 less than 15 mg/ml. the optimized nanoemulsion comprised 21.62% virgin coconut oil, 48.38% tween 80, and 30% peg 400, producing a droplet size of less than 50 nm. the peel-off formulation was successfully formulated along with pva 10-11% and hpmc 0.25-1% with a drying time of around 30 min. the nanoemulgel peel-off mask formulation played significant roles in enhancing the permeation and deposition in the percutaneous transport using rat skin membrane for roughly 200% and 50%, respectively. conclusion: the nanoemulsion incorporated into a hydrogel-based peel-off mask enhanced the permeation of dgte polyphenol compounds.