Elmira Arab Tehrany

Active Food Packaging Evolution: Transformation from Micro- to Nanotechnology

Predicting which attributes consumers are willing to pay extra for has become straightforward in recent years. The demands for the prime necessity of food of natural quality, elevated safety, minimally processed, ready-to-eat, and longer shelf-life have turned out to be matters of paramount importance. The increased awareness of environmental conservation and the escalating rate of foodborne illnesses have driven the food industry to implement a more innovative solution, i.e. bioactive packaging. Owing to nanotechnology application in eco-favorable coatings and encapsulation systems, the probabilities of enhancing food quality, safety, stability, and efficiency have been augmented. In this review article, the collective results highlight the food nanotechnology potentials with special focus on its application in active packaging, novel nano- and microencapsulation techniques, regulatory issues, and socio-ethical scepticism between nano-technophiles and nano-technophobes. No one has yet indicated the comparison of data concerning food nano- versus micro-technology; therefore noteworthy results of recent investigations are interpreted in the context of bioactive packaging. The next technological revolution in the domain of food science and nutrition would be the 3-BIOS concept enabling a controlled release of active agents through bioactive, biodegradable, and bionanocomposite combined strategy.

Elaboration and characterization of nanoliposome made of soya; rapeseed and salmon lecithins: application to cell culture.

Health benefits of unsaturated fatty acids have been demonstrated over the last decades. Nanotechnology provided new process to produce particles such as liposomes and nanoliposomes made of pure phospholipids. These techniques are already used in pharmaceutics to augment the bioavailability and the bioefficiency of drugs. The aim of this paper is to characterize and evaluate the potential of nanoliposomes made of three lecithins (soya, rapeseed and salmon) on cell culture in order to use them in the future as drug delivery systems for tissue engineering. We began to measure, with zetasizer, the radius size of liposomes particles which are 125.5, 136.7 and 130.3 nm respectively for rapeseed, soya and salmon lecithin. Simultaneously, solutions observed by TEM demonstrated the particles were made much of liposomes than droplet (emulsion). Finally, we found that the solutions of lecithins were enough stable over 5 days at 37 °C to be used in culture medium. We investigated the effect of soya, rapeseed and salmon lecithin liposome from 2mg/mL to 5.2 μg/mL on metabolic activity and cell proliferation on rat bone marrow stem cells (rBMSC) during 14 days. The results showed that the three lecithins (soya, rapeseed and salmon) improve cell proliferation at different concentration.

An efficient liposome based method for antioxidants encapsulation

Apigenin is an antioxidant that has shown a preventive activity against different cancer and cardiovascular disorders. In this study, we encapsulate apigenin with liposome to tackle the issue of its poor bioavailability and low stability. Apigenin loaded liposomes are fabricated with food-grade rapeseed lecithin in an aqueous medium in absence of any organic solvent. The liposome particle characteristics, such as particle size and polydispersity are optimised by tuning ultrasonic processing parameters. In addition, to measure the liposome encapsulation efficiency accurately, we establish a unique high-performance liquid chromatography technique in which an alkaline buffer mobile phase is used to prevent apigenin precipitation in the column;. salt is added to separate lipid particles from the aqeuous phase. Our results demonstrate that apigenin encapsulation efficiency is nearly 98% that is remarkably higher than any other reported value for encapsulation of this compound. In addition, the average particle size of these liposomes is 158.9 ± 6.1 nm that is suitable for the formulation of many food products, such as fortified fruit juice. The encapsulation method developed in this study, therefore have a high potential for the production of innovative, functional foods or nutraceutical products.