Advances in polysaccharides for probiotic delivery: Properties, methods, and applications

Probiotics are essential to improve the health of the host, whereas maintaining the viability of probiotics in harsh environments remains a challenge. Polysaccharides have non-toxicity, excellent biocompatibility, and outstanding biodegradability, which can protect probiotics by forming a physical barrier and show a promising prospect for probiotic delivery. In this review, we summarize polysaccharides commonly used for probiotic microencapsulation and introduce the microencapsulation technologies, including extrusion, emulsion, spray drying, freeze drying, and electrohydrodynamics. We discuss strategies for better protection of probiotics and introduce the applications of polysaccharides-encapsulated probiotics in functional food, oral formulation, and animal feed. Finally, we propose the challenges of polysaccharides-based delivery systems in industrial production and application. This review will help provide insight into the advances and challenges of polysaccharides in probiotic delivery.

Alginate Based Core-Shell Capsules Production through Coextrusion Methods: Recent Applications

Encapsulation is used in various industries to protect active molecules and control the release of the encapsulated materials. One of the structures that can be obtained using coextrusion encapsulation methods is the core-shell capsule. This review focuses on coextrusion encapsulation applications for the preservation of oils and essential oils, probiotics, and other bioactives. This technology isolates actives from the external environment, enhances their stability, and allows their controlled release. Coextrusion offers a valuable means of preserving active molecules by reducing oxidation processes, limiting the evaporation of volatile compounds, isolating some nutrients or drugs with undesired taste, or stabilizing probiotics to increase their shelf life. Being environmentally friendly, coextrusion offers significant application opportunities for the pharmaceutical, food, and agriculture sectors.

Co-encapsulation of probiotics with prebiotics and their application in functional/synbiotic dairy products

Oral administration of live probiotics along with prebiotics has been suggested with numerous beneficial effects for several conditions including certain infectious disorders, diarrheal illnesses, some inflammatory bowel diseases, and most recently, irritable bowel syndrome. Though, delivery of such viable bacteria to the host intestine is a major challenge, due to the poor survival of the ingested probiotic bacteria during the gastric transit, especially within the stomach where the pH is highly acidic. Although microencapsulation has been known as a promising approach for improving the viability of probiotics in the human digestive tract, the success rate is not satisfactory. For this reason, co-encapsulation of probiotics with probiotics has been practised as a novel alternative approach for further improvement of the oral delivery of viable probiotics toward their targeted release in the host intestine. This paper discusses the co-encapsulation technologies used for delivery of probiotics toward better stability and viability, as well the incorporation of co-encapsulated probiotics and prebiotics in functional/synbiotic dairy foods. The common encapsulation technologies (and the materials) used for this purpose, the stability and survival of co-encapsulated probiotics in the food, and the release behavior of the co-encapsulated probiotics in the gastrointestinal tract have also been explained. Most studies reported a significant improvement particularly in the viability of bacteria associated with the presence of prebiotics. Nevertheless, the previous research has mostly been carried out in the simulated digestion, meaning that future systematic research is to be carried out to investigate the efficacy of the co-encapsulation on the survival of the bacteria in the gut in vivo.

Potential Sustainable Properties of Microencapsulated Endophytic Lactic Acid Bacteria (KCC-42) in In-Vitro Simulated Gastrointestinal Juices and Their Fermentation Quality of Radish Kimchi

The objective of this study was to investigate alginate microencapsulated lactic acid bacteria (LAB) fermentation quality of radish kimchi sample and its potential survivability in different acidic and alkaline environments. Initially, we isolated 45 LAB strains. One of them showed fast growth pattern with potential probiotic and antifungal activities against Aspergillus flavus with a zone of inhibition calculated with 10, 8, 4mm for the 4th, 5th, and 6th day, respectively. Therefore, this strain (KCC-42) was chosen for microencapsulation with alginate biopolymer. It showed potential survivability in in-vitro simulated gastrointestinal fluid and radish kimchi fermentation medium. The survival rate of this free and encapsulated LAB KCC-42 was 6.85 × 105 and 7.48× 105 CFU/ml, respectively; the viability count was significantly higher than nonencapsulated LAB in simulated gastrointestinal juices (acid, bile, and pancreatin) and under radish kimchi fermentation environment. Kimchi sample added with this encapsulated LAB showed increased production of organic acids compared to nonencapsulated LAB sample. Also, the organic acids such as lactic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid, and succinic acid production in fermented kimchi were measured 59mM, 26mM, 14mM, and 0.6mM of g/DW, respectively. The production of metabolites such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and succinic acid and the bacteria population was high in microencapsulated LAB samples compared with free bacteria added kimchi sample. Results of this study indicate that microencapsulated LAB KCC-42 might be a useful strategy to develop products for food and healthcare industries.