Recovery of verbascoside from Lantana camara pruning waste for development of phytosomes with antioxidant and hypoglycemic properties

Verbascoside is a phenolic glycoside with various biological properties and is employed in the cosmetic, food, and pharmaceutical industries. However, it suffers from both low bioavailability and chemical stability. This work aims to recover value-added compounds such as verbascoside from Lantana camara crops, a plant naturalized worldwide and considered a risky invasive weed. The extract was then loaded in nanoparticles to improve the physiochemical properties of verbascoside. Firstly, lantana’s twigs were subjected to microwave-assisted extraction by applying a Box–Behnken design. The response surface methodology allows obtaining an extract with total phenolic (222.1 mg GAE/g) and verbascoside (104.2 mg/g) contents, as well as antiradical and antioxidant activities, higher than those previously reported by conventional extraction on lantana twigs. Noteworthy, the new bioactive extract was obtained using greener and more sustainable conditions and methodologies with respect to previously published researches. The extract exhibits promising hypoglycemic properties, with higher inhibitory potency toward α-glucosidase (25.0 µg/mL) compared with α-amylase (65.4 µg/mL), and anti-glycation activity. Cell safety was ascertained (90.1 % on Caco-2, 107.4 % on HT29-MTX) at 62.5 µg/mL, a concentration higher than the effective extract dose. The extract, together with a phosphatidylcholine fraction derived from soy lecithin, was employed for phytosome formulation through a simple, cost-effective, and scalable process. The resulting preparation showed good physical stability when stored at 5 and 25°C for 4 months. The release kinetics from phytosomes revealed the effectiveness of this system in gradually releasing verbascoside, reaching 67.7 % after 7 h. Moreover, phytosomes kept the extract properties. This study demonstrated the feasibility of recoveriyng verbascoside from the pruning of a plant weed, obtaining an extract with promising antioxidant and hypoglycemic properties for developing new products and materials.