SBIR Phase I: Bio-Inspired Encapsulation Approaches for Improving Stability and Delivery of Food Compounds

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一系列天然和低成本的食品源封装产品，这些产品在加工和储存过程中提高了生物活性的整体物理化学稳定性。消费者对食品衍生的植物化学物质和营养生物活性物质有很大的需求，这些物质已知具有极好的健康和营养价值。但是，对食品工业来说，一个巨大的挑战是这些生物活性物质在加工和储存过程中固有的氧化和热不稳定性，最终导致它们的降解。目前的解决方案不是最优的，增加了大量的成本，并且经常需要使用合成化学品。所有这些都只能对食品的保质期提供有限的改善。利用一种不含添加剂和牺牲抗氧化剂的全天然解决方案的封装工艺，成功地提高了易感食品成分和生物活性物质的化学和热稳定性，将改变食品封装行业（目前的市场规模超过220亿美元），并通过延长食品的保质期来提高食品的可持续性。该SBIR一期项目建议开发一种新的包封方法，该方法将显著改善包封生物活性化合物的氧化、pH和热稳定性，从而延长其保质期。由于生物活性物质和天然色素固有的氧化和化学不稳定性以及它们在加工过程中的加速降解，食品加工和储存过程中出现了挑战。本项目的主要目标是通过压力辅助封装方法开发利用细胞封装生物活性物质的封装系统，评估pH值、热量和氧化对封装生物活性物质稳定性的影响，并确定其在模型饮料系统中的保质期。包封的模型化合物包括：天然色素提取物、抗氧化剂和抗炎产品、维生素。与目前的技术水平相比，快速和可扩展的压力辅助封装技术的应用可以在细胞的细胞内结构中快速有效地分配脂溶性和水溶性化合物。与传统的扩散过程相比，它还提供了动力学和封装过程效率的多重改进。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is the development of an array of natural and low cost food-derived encapsulation products with improved overall physicochemical stability of the bioactives during processing and storage. There is a great consumer demand for food-derived phytochemicals and nutrient bioactives that are known to exhibit excellent health and nutritional benefits. But, an imposing challenge to the food industry is the inherent oxidative and thermal instability of these bioactives during processing and storage that eventually results in their degradation. The current solutions are sub-optimal, add substantial cost, and often require the use of synthetic chemicals. All of these only provide a limited improvement in the food product's shelf life. Success in improving chemical and thermal stability of susceptible food ingredients and bioactives utilizing an encapsulation process that will provide an all-natural solution without additives and sacrificial antioxidants will transform the food encapsulation industry (current market size over $22 billion dollars,) and improve the sustainability of food products by extending their shelf life.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a novel encapsulation approach that will significantly improve oxidative, pH and thermal stability of the encapsulated bioactive compounds, and thereby extend their shelf-lives. Challenges during food processing and storage arise due to inherent oxidative and chemical instability of bioactives and natural colorants and their accelerated degradation during processing. The key objectives of this project are to develop encapsulation systems using cells to encapsulate bioactives by a pressure-assisted encapsulation method, evaluate the influence of pH, heat and oxidation on stability of encapsulated bioactives, and determine their shelf life in a model beverage system. The encapsulated model compounds include: natural color extracts, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory products, and vitamins. Compared to the current state-of-art, the application of a rapid and scalable pressure-assisted encapsulation technology enables quick and efficient partitioning of fat-soluble and water-soluble compounds in intracellular structures of cells. It also provides multifold improvement in the kinetics and efficiency of encapsulation process compared to conventional diffusion processes.