Bioactive compounds (BCs) possess health benefits, but they are not stable upon exposure to sensitive environments. It is thus necessary to encapsulate and protect BCs for their application in functional foods. There appear to be interesting market opportunities for functional foods fortified with a range of BCs and offering multiple health benefits. Co-administering different BCs may produce synergistic effect on their bioactivity and improved stability. These provide motivation to develop the carrier systems that can simultaneously load a plurality of BCs. BCs with different solubility were simultaneously bound to ligand-binding proteins, since the proteins have multiple binding sites. The co-loaded BCs were more stable than the single-loaded bioactive compound. Furthermore, BCs were co-encapsulated at the oil-water interface of emulsions and in the protein matrix in emulsion gels. In addition, it was also found that the BCs with different solubility could be co-loaded in protein-based homogenous particles, due to the smart partition of BCs. Food proteins were used as wall materials to encapsulate and protect multiple BCs, and the effects were improved by their combination with polysaccharides.

Simultaneous loading and protection of bioactive compounds using protein-based assemblies

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.