Fabrication of amorphous curcumin nanosuspensions using β-lactoglobulin to enhance solubility, stability, and bioavailability

•Curcumin crystal size was reduced to nanoscale using nanonization.•Protein β-lactoglobulin was used as surfactant to stabilize nanocrystals.•Nanonization increased the aqueous solubility and stability of curcumin.•β-lactoglobulin increase the bioavailability of curcumin. Curcumin has low aqueous stability and solubility in its native form. It also has a low bioavailability which presents a major barrier to its use in fortifying food products. The aim of this work was to reduce the size of curcumin crystals to the nanoscale and subsequently stabilize them in an amorphous form. To this end, amorphous curcumin nanosuspensions were fabricated using the antisolvent precipitation method with β-lactoglobulin (β-lg) as a stabilizer. The resulting amorphous curcumin nanosuspensions were in the size range of 150–175nm with unimodal size distribution. The curcumin particles were amorphous and were molecularly dispersed within the β-lg as confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. The solubility of the amorphous curcumin nanosuspension was enhanced ∼35-fold due to the reduced size and lower crystallinity. Among the formulations, the amorphous curcumin nanosuspensions stabilized with β-lg and prepared at pH 3.4 (β-lg-cur 3.4), showed maximum aqueous stability which was >90% after 30 days. An in vitro study using Caco-2 cell lines showed a significant increase in curcumin bioavailability after stabilization with β-lg.