4.4.1. Ethics Statement

The animal experiment in the current study was conducted following the procedures approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of Chung Yuan Christian University under project number 106011 (accessed on 10 August 2017).

#### 4.4.2. Rat management

A total of 14 male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were purchased from BioLASCO Taiwan Co., Ltd. The weight of the rats was around 250 to 300 g. The animals were divided into three groups, as indicated in Table 2. We performed the experiments according to the timeline in Figure 6.

**Table 2.** Rat groups and treatment administered.


**Figure 6.** Experimental timeline of Parkinson's disease model in rats treated with EGCG-loaded liposomes (or PBS).

The LPS-induced PD rat model, which injected LPS unilaterally into the substantia nigra, which can elicit strong microglia-mediated neuroinflammation that is followed by the specific death of nigral dopaminergic neurons, is widely used to study the inflammatory process in the pathogenesis of PD [42,43], and the anti-inflammatory mechanism of some substances. In our experiment, LPS was injected into the substantia nigra of the right midbrain. The LPS injection led to neuroinflammation by destroying the dopamine neuropathway of the substantia nigra. The EGCG-loaded liposome was administered for four weeks to investigate its neuroprotective activity. The rotation behavior of rats and the expression of neuroinflammatory markers (TNF-α, IL-1β) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) have been evaluated.
