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Vitamin D is an essential nutrient with important immunomodulatory properties. As a fat-soluble compound, Vitamin D (and its D3 form) is immiscible with water, which presents challenges to absorption. In an in vitro setting, the current study characterizes novel micellar formulations of Vitamin D3 designed to improve absorption. Techniques used to evaluate and compare the micellar formulations against a non-micellar formula include the following: cryo-SEM to determine morphology; laser diffraction to determine particle size and distribution; zeta potential to determine stability of the particles; solubility assays to determine solubility in water and gastrointestinal media; and Caco-2 cell monolayers to determine intestinal permeability. Results show advantageous features (particle size range in the low micrometres with an average zeta potential of −51.56 ± 2.76 mV), as well as significant improvements in intestinal permeability, in one optimized micellar formula (LipoMicel®). When introduced to Caco-2 cells, LipoMicel’s permeability was significantly better than the control (p < 0.01; ANOVA). Findings of this study suggest that the novel micellar form of Vitamin D3 (LipoMicel) has the potential to promote absorption of Vitamin D3. Thus, it can serve as a promising candidate for follow-up in vivo studies in humans.

The most prominent horsetail species, Equisetum arvense, has an array of different medicinal properties, thus the proper authentication and differentiation of the plant from the more toxic Equisetum palustre is important. This study sought to identify different samples of E. arvense and E. palustre using three analytical methods. The first method involved the use of HPTLC analysis, as proposed by the European Pharmacopoeia. The second, HPLC-ESI-MS/MS, is capable of both identification and quantification and was used to determine the Equisetum alkaloid content in each sample. A third method was DNA barcoding, which identifies the samples based on their genetic make-up. Both HPTLC and HPLC-ESI-MS/MS proved to be suitable methods of identification, with HPLC-ESI-MS/MS proving the more sophisticated method for the quantification of alkaloids in the Equisetum samples and for determining the adulteration of E. arvense. For DNA barcoding, optimal primer pairs were elucidated to allow for the combined use of the rbcL and ITS markers to accurately identify each species. As new DNA marker sequences were added to GenBank, the reference library has been enriched for future work with these horsetail species.