The administration of probiotic bacteria as nutraceuticals is an area that has rapidly expanded in recent years, with a global market worth $32.6 billion predicted by 2014. Many of the health promoting claims attributed to these bacteria are dependent on the cells being both viable and sufficiently numerous in the intestinal tract. The oral administration of most bacteria results in a large los...

Bread is a global staple food. Despite attempts to develop functional breads containing viable microorganisms, this has not been done yet because of the high temperature during baking. The aim of this study is to obtain synbiotic bread, hence hamburger bun and white pan bread were selected. Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-5 and L. casei 431 were encapsulated with calcium alginate and Hi-maize resi...

The encapsulation of living mammalian cells within a semi-permeable hydrogel matrix is an attractive procedure for many biomedical and biotechnological applications, such as xenotransplantation, maintenance of stem cell phenotype and bioprinting of three-dimensional scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In this review, we focus on naturally derived polymers that can form h...

Drug delivery has become increasingly important mainly due to the awareness of the difficulties associated with a variety of old and new drugs. Of the many polymeric drug delivery systems, biodegradable polymers have been used widely as drug delivery systems because of their biocompatibility and biodegradability. The majority of biodegradable polymers have been used in the form of microparticle...

Michael T. Cook, George Tzortzis, Dimitris Charalampopoulos*, Vitaliy V. Khutoryanskiy* 4 School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AD, United Kingdom 5 Clasado Research Services Ltd, Science and Technology Centre, University of Reading, Earley 6 Gate, Whiteknights Road, Reading, RG6 6BZ, United Kingdom 7 Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading, Reading...

When CdSe/ZnS-polyethyleneimine (PEI) quantum dots (QDs) are microencapsulated in polymeric microcapsules, human fibroblasts are protected from acute cytotoxic effects. Differences in cellular morphology, uptake, and viability were assessed after treatment with either microencapsulated or unencapsulated dots. Specifically, QDs contained in microcapsules terminated with polyethylene glycol (PEG)...

the delivery of therapeutic proteins has gained momentum with development of biotechnology. however, large molecular weight, hydrophilic nature and susceptibility to harsh environment of gastrointestinal tract (git) resulted in low absorption. the main objective of this work was the design of a particulate system for oral delivery of recombinant human growth hormone (rhgh) on the basis of parti...

In view of treating intracellular Brucella infections, microspheres made of poly(lactide) (PLA) and poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) were developed as delivery system for the cationic and highly hydrophilic antibiotic gentamicin sulphate. Drug microencapsulation by spray drying yielded microspheres with regular morphology, an average particle size of approximately 3 micrometer and encapsulatio...

Probiotics possess potential therapeutic and preventative effects for various diseases and metabolic disorders. One important limitation for the oral delivery of probiotics is the harsh conditions of the upper gastrointestinal tract (GIT) which challenge bacterial viability and activity. One proposed method to surpass this obstacle is the use of microencapsulation to improve the delivery of bac...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to improve the drug loading, encapsulation efficiency, and sustained-release properties of supercritical CO(2)-based drug-loaded polymer carriers via a process of suspension-enhanced dispersion by supercritical CO(2) (SpEDS), which is an advanced version of solution-enhanced dispersion by supercritical CO(2) (SEDS). METHODS Methotrexate nanoparticles were ...