Strategies to Protect and Deliver Curcumin via Zein Nanocomposites for Food Applications

ABSTRACT

Curcumin (Cur) considered as a golden nutraceutical, is emerging as one of bioactive compounds demonstrating the most promising biological activities, including antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer. It is also used for coloring and seasoning in foods. However, Cur applications are limited due to factors like low aqueous solubility, poor colloidal stability and bioavailability. Extensive efforts were made using pure zein (Ze) to develop nanoparticles (NPs) for encapsulation of Cur to overcome the aforementioned issues. Nevertheless, zein nanoparticles (ZeNPs) have limitations related to their instability to neutral pH and rapid degradation by gastric proteases. Thus, the combination between Ze and different biopolymers to produce zein nanocomposites (ZeNCs) for improving the stability of ZeNPs were scrutinized in this study. The mass ratio of Ze/polymer played a critical in the formation and stability of ZeNCs. Electrostatic attraction, hydrogen bonding and intermolecular interaction were responsible for ZeNCs formation. High encapsulation efficiency (EE), storage stability, solubility, bioaccessibility, intestinal permeability and antioxidant activity (AA) for Cur were achieved in ZeNCs compared to ZeNPs. ZeNCs did not show toxicity towards normal NCM460 and 293 cells, but potent anticancer activity against MCF-7, HepG2, Hela, and HCT 116 cells. ZeNCs displayed potential applications in different food matrices.

KEYWORDS:

• Curcumin
• encapsulation
• zein nanoparticles
• zein nanocomposites

Highlights

• Zein nanocomposites (ZeNCs) can substitute pure zein nanoparticles (ZeNPs).

• ZeNCs were more effective than ZeNPs for encapsulation and delivery of curcumin.

• Higher encapsulation efficiency, solubility, and stability for curcumin in ZeNCs.

• Higher bioaccessibility and intestinal permeability for curcumin in ZeNCs.

• More gradual release of curcumin from ZeNCs during gastrointestinal digestion.

Disclosure statement

During the design and conduct of this research, we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence our work.

Author contributions

Alkassoumi Hassane Hamadou: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Roles/Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing.

Jiyao Zhang: Review & editing.

Bin Xu: Funding acquisition; Investigation; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; review & editing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Key Research & Development project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BE2020324), Regional Collaborative Innovation Special Program of Xinjiang Autonomous Region – Science and Technology Assistance Program for Xinjiang (No. 2022E02094), Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. KYCX22_3702), Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent (Grant No. 2022ZB671).