Oral delivery of unstable bioactive components sourced from food: formulation and assessment

摘要

Bioactive components are natural food-derived non-essential nutrients with the potential for exerting health-protective or disease-preventive properties beyond their nutritive value. There are numerous food-derived bioactive compounds, many of them understudied, that work differently, presenting a wide range of biological properties, namely: antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, anti-microbials, anti-hypertensive activities and DNA-protective compounds and so on. Oral delivery is the preferred route forbioactive delivery due to high levels of patient acceptance, long-term compliance and ease of administration, However, in order for the bioactive component to elicit the desired physiological effects via the oral route, a number of challenges for oral administration must be overcome, These include insufficient gastric residence time, low permeability and/ or solubility within the gut, instabilityunder food processing conditions (temperature, oxygen, light) or in the gastrointestinal tract (pH, enzymes, presence of other nutrients), all of which may limit the activity and potential health benefits of bioactive molecules. To address these challenges, it is necessary to construct an appropriate formulation that will protect and maintain the active ingredient in the relevant location for it to deliver its physiological/therapeutic effect within the required time frame.