Probiotic encapsulation with coaxial dropping method
Project no. 21537 · Status: Kapanmış · 2019
Summary
Encapsulation is the process of coating a substance or a mixture with another substance or mixture. This process allows solid liquid or gaseous materials to release the content they trap within a specified period or under certain conditions. Recently, this method is being used in fields such as food, pharmacology, cosmetics, medicine, and biotechnology. The drugs produced by encapsulation method have many advantages compared to conventional medicines. Those advantages are active ingredient protection, drugs targeting, increasing dissolution and bioavailability, providing long term effect, decreasing side effect profile. Probiotics are living microorganisms in the body that balances microbial. In several studies, it is shown that the encapsulation method is effective for the treatment and protection of bacterial and viral diarrhea, atopic or inflammatory diseases. In order to have probiotics to be effective on gastrointestinal system diseases, probiotics must survive in challenging conditions such as stomach acid, bile salts, various enzymes and probiotics should reach in numbers to colonize in intestines. To maintain the viability of probiotics for a longer time and to increase their bioavailability, coating of probiotics has been considered with the microencapsulation technique. Lactobacillus acidophilus is used in diseases such as diarrhea and ulcerative colitis caused by a disruption in the healthy flora of the intestine for various reasons. However, the growth of the microorganism is challenging in the gut. Therefore, L. acidophilus was chosen as a suitable microorganism for encapsulation. Sodium alginate solution was selected as the outer shell material thanks to its ability to form a stable heat resistant gel, non-toxic, biocompatible, and low cost. This study aimed encapsulation of L. acidophilus with coaxial dropping method. Calcium alginate, which is a biocompatible polymer, was used as coating material to maintain the viability of the microorganism. With this formulation and production technique, more effective and safe use of probiotics can be provided, and public health can be contributed.