Ultra high concentration liposomal tincture possibilities

Hash and Stuff Pre/Post-Processing
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Mods feel free to move this as I’m not sure this is the most appropriate but best guessed sub.

TL;DR at bottom, this is a kinda long one.

In my quest for research in a new venture, CBD/CBG/CBN tinctures, I discovered this place about a week ago. I’ve been gleaning what I can and have realized there is a high density of highly intelligent individuals here. Finding a forum like this feels… wrong, like it shouldn’t exist and even as a new user understand how awesome of a resource F4200 is!

To that end I actually registered, which is really rare, and am dipping my toes in per se by inquiring your great collective knowledge.

I’ve been trying to get into larger scale organic, regenerative cultivation for a few years but that plan is more a long term goal and may need a few more to come to fruition. In the meantime and after a lengthy discussion about pursuing something in the hemp/cannabis industry with my father(used to sell medical equipment - blood cell analyzers and drug testing) we decided that we should try to offer a high quality, liposomal, ultra high concentration product at a much more affordable price point than the market currently offers consumers.

Our highest concentration product goal is around 8-10g of active be it CBD, CBG, CBN(all isolates) or a combination thereof, encapsulated with a phospholipid complex from third party tested, deoiled sunflower lecithin powder in a third party tested grapeseed oil base.

The next step we’re starting to mess with is sonication. After reading quite a bit from Hielsher and pubmed documents we figured it would be a decent step towards producing a partially or largely “nanified” product. We’re not trying to make or have any current interest in a water or water soluble product. Merely upping the bioavailability as far as oral absorption, onset, overall efficacy, digestive protection and duration of the active in a typical oil tincture is our goal as historically a lot of the products on the market consumers are exposed to are kind of shit.

We have been using our hotplate/mag stirrer to combine all the ingredients(lower concentrations for testing purposes) after that we’ve been sonicating with a U.S. Solid 20kHz 450w probe at 65% amplitude. I think this may be too much amplitude as this has oxidized and burnt something in the oil as it smells of a lightly fishy, overheated electronic device type of smell. We removed the active and same smell, removed the lecithin and same smell in pure grapeseed oil. I believe this is a common problem after reading some articles, some on here even.

Before I head down a path of wasting our resources just busting out different mixtures in various steps I implore your knowledge as to my next best step(s)

TL;DR - How possible is achieving a high concentration(8g+) nano scale(100-500nm), oil based(no water at all) tincture using isolates, sunflower lecithin and grapeseed oil with access to an ultrasonic probe homogenizer?

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You need water in order to form the liposome though-

the nano encapsulation via phosphatidylcholine traps the fat soluble compounds in the wall of the bubble and it needs the core of that bubble to be polar, a polar solvent also being the carrier

Unless im wrong? Always room for error but i am pretty certain that you need that water present.

You also wont find much benefit jn terms of effects until you hit 50nm or less

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Thank you for the reply @Rowan

For clarity I have a limited understanding of the actual formation of a real bonafide empty liposome produced in lab/pharma setting. I am intending to extort the nature of the surfactant, lecithin, and the shear ability of the sonicator to break the cannabinoid molecule clusters down to a smaller size alongside PC molecules also being ripped apart and hoping they find and bind to each other in a way that encapsulates the now smaller CBD molecule in a total vesicle size <100nm and homogenously suspended/dispersed in the bulk of the carrier oil.

Wouldn’t the lipophilic cannabinoid just be bound in the bilayer without the inclusion of a polar aqeous
solution/emulsion to occupy the core? I’ve had thoughts on that though, in all intents leaving the hydrophillic core empty would be a waste

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It wont have a core without water

Liposomes are formed when the water and the lipo/lecithin mix is hydrated

Your easiest method to form liposomes is as follows

Dissolve your PC/cannabinoid/surfactant mix into an organic solvent such as ethanol

Dry down the solvent

Using a high shear homogenizer, inensovely mix the lecithin/oil blend while slowly adding water

You have formed crude liposomes, the high shear should be able to take them down to a few hundred NM

Use an ultrasonic homogenizer to size down your liposomes and then make sure to run it through a nano-filter to enaure no toxic metals contaminants exist!

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Welcome to the future @DFisher! Great to have you here with us, and happy to see you putting the customer first. :slight_smile:

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8g+ is not a “concentration”. Nor is it necessarily “concentrated”.

8g in 10mls would be “concentrated”
8g in the Pacific Ocean would not be.

In order for that 8-10g to have any meaning as a “concentration” you need to define the volume…

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Thanks for the warm welcome!

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My apologies I forgot a very important detail there.

30mL/1oz in various concentrations up to 10g as the product line develops 8000 being our arbitrary target.

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Indeed.

So you’re targeting 10000mg in 30ml

== 333mg/ml (which IS a concentration)

It’s also pretty close to the limit for a simple tincture in say MCT**.

I’ve got zero experience beyond such simple tinctures, but I don’t see that adding all the other bits you need to achieve your

Is going to get you any more cannabinoids into your 1oz tincture.

** I went looking for @Dr_Jebril’s solubility data, and found this post. Pretty sure he’s posted lower limits later.

How many mgs of cbd isolate can I add to a 30ml MCT solution before the cbd begins to crystallize? - #14 by Dr_Jebril

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That was the first observations I made, using extract.

Later I found out that the solubility actually depends on the MCT oil composition and also on the presence of waxes. The limit of the pure CBD Isolate in the pure MCT oil I use is ~33% At room temperature (22°C). It can be increased to ~47% using hemp waxes (maybe higher). It gets 5-6% lower in other kind of oil such as olive or hempseed. The more linoleic acid the less it is soluble. Thus tuning the MCT oil C8:C10 composition may also allow to increase the solubility.

Solublity apppears also a few % lower for CBG.
I have not tried to find the limit for CBN. It is at least as soluble as CBG.

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I understand the necessity of the water now and it’s role in the creation of the liposome.

I am probably not equipped to handle flammable solvents or to perform vapor capture or however else all of that is done safely to maintain ownership of all 10 fingers, eye balls and the like.

Are there any cold emulsion techniques you’re familiar with or if it’s possible even with the necessary addition of the water, how about with an additional surfactant like quijalla or similar?

I believe I would now be thinking of an O/W/O emulsion…

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You can use a freeze/thaw process to form crude liposomes as well.

You ask all the right questions

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@cyclopath @Dr_Jebril

The addition of the lecithin and the use of the ultrasonic processing is in theory supposed to yield a product that is mostly comprised of evenly dispersed, encapsulated molecules of CBD(hopefully closer to the lower nm range) that due to not only the nature of the encapsulation but the suspension in oil instead of water resists things like coalescence or precipitation and allows the use of higher than described concentration levels again that’s at least the theory haha :sweat_smile:

Thank you for pointing out the linoleic acid reducing the solubility as grapeseed oil is high(er?) in linoleic and oleic acids.

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My appreciations, I’m sure I’ll return after some more reading

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So you begin to understand what you’re trying to make….

I fail to see how adding water will get you greater solubility that can be achieved in oil alone.

That may mean I dont get it, but sit with it for a bit…

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You need to put the water into the oil if you want the oil to be able to go into water

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Hey @cyclopath how much of your body is made of water?

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Enough that dissolving even 50mg/ml cannabinoids in my homogenized remains seems unlikely…

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Why are we trying to concentrate the active compounds in the tincture when you body can’t uptake those canabinoids anyway

Even if you achieved the concentration your after, your literally Pissing away the canabinoids

I think bioavailability is what needs to increase, not the concentration

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Do uwu understand first pass metabolism?