Hexosomes with Undecylenic Acid Efficient against Candida albicans.

Due to the growing issues with fungal infections, especially with , there is still a need to develop novel anti- materials. One of the known antifungal agents is undecylenic acid (UA), which still cannot be efficiently used due to its oily nature, and thus limited solubility. By taking advantage of the properties of UA, we developed an emulsion with hexagonal phase, i.e., hexosomes, whose structure and morphology was studied by small-angle X-ray scattering and cryo-electron microscopy, respectively. The presence of UA in the hexosome was confirmed by spectroscopy. Moreover, we studied the anti- effect of hexosomes and their cytotoxicity toward human cells. The minimal inhibitory concentration for the 50% and 90% -growth reduction was found at 0.01 and 0.16 wt % hexosomes, respectively (i.e., 2 and 32 pg/cell, respectively). The percentage of metabolically active was reduced by 72-96% at hexosome concentrations of 1.0-8.2 pg/cell as compared to untreated . Furthermore, at the same concentration range the embedded filamentation test after 24 and 48 h showed the inhibition of both the filamentation and growth of , while the preliminary toxicity test showed that hexosomes were nontoxic for human cells. All these render the here-developed hexosomes with UA efficient and promising anti- agents.