Electrosprayed Soft Capsules of Millimeter Size for Specifically Delivering Fish Oil/Nutrients to the Stomach and Intestines.
Contrasting to the traditional centimeter-sized soft capsules that are difficult to swallow or micro/nanometer-sized soft capsules that suffer from limited loading capacity for fish oil/nutrients and lowered stability, the millimeter-sized soft capsules with good enough stability could be a potential solution in solving these problems. Herein, we report millimeter-sized soft core-shell capsules of 0.42-1.85 mm with an inner diameter of 0.36-1.75 mm, for fish oil/nutrients, obtained through an electrospray approach upon optimization of different fabrication parameters such as applied voltage, sodium alginate concentration, shell/core feeding rate ratio, times of feeding rate, and types of coaxial needles. Further in vitro and in vivo studies reveal that the resulting soft capsules were apparently weakened and became mechanically destructive in the simulated small intestine solution and were totally destroyed in the simulated small intestine solution if they were first treated in the simulated stomach solution but not in the simulated stomach solution, which makes the millimeter-sized capsules useful as containers for specific delivery of fish oils and lipophilic nutrients to the stomach and intestines with excellent in vivo bioavailability (>90%). The whole fabrication approach is very facile with no complicated polymer modification and formulations involved, which endows the resulting soft capsules with broad application prospect in food and drug industries.
['Wang|Panpan|P|', 'Li|Min|M|', 'Wei|Daixu|D|', 'Ding|Mengzhen|M|', 'Tao|Lina|L|', 'Liu|Xunwei|X|', 'Zhang|Fengping|F|', 'Tao|Ningping|N|', 'Wang|Xichang|X|', 'Gao|Mingyuan|M|http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7360-3684', 'Zhong|Jian|J|http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2475-3221']
D000464:Alginates D000818:Animals D002214:Capsules D055664:Electrochemical Techniques D005395:Fish Oils D005753:Gastric Mucosa D007421:Intestine, Small D010316:Particle Size D011817:Rabbits
electrospray soft capsules fish oil alginate targeting β-carotene