Repurposing itraconazole to the benefit of skin cancer treatment: A combined azole-DDAB nanoencapsulation strategy

[Display omitted] •Stable homogeneous small sized SLN can be successfully prepared using Suppocire NB.•DDAB-coated SLN improve of almost 30% the amount of drug released.•Uncoated and DDAB-coated SLN can be safely used on non-tumoral HaCaT cell line.•A dose-dependent decrease of skin cancer cells viability was found with DDAB-SLN.•Combined delivery of ITZ and DDAB benefits skin cancer (melanoma) cells treatment. In this work, we aimed at developing an improved topical SLN formulation combining itraconazole delivery with a coating layer of didodecyldimethylammonium bromide, thus repurposing the drug effectiveness by synergistic skin anticancer effectiveness. In order to obtain a stable SLN formulation with small homogeneously dispersed particles, a deep formulative study was developed screening three different solid lipids (Suppocire NB, Cetyl Palmitate and Dynasan 114) for the SLN preparation by the phase inversion temperature. A bluishcolored shade formulation, with homogeneous small particles size (