The rise in life expectancies and gap between life span and health span necessitate innovative approaches, interventions, and food solutions to secure healthy aging. This study, conducted within the framework of th...
The rise in life expectancies and gap between life span and health span necessitate innovative approaches, interventions, and food solutions to secure healthy aging. This study, conducted within the framework of the EAT4AGE project of the Joint Programming Initiative 'A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life’, focuses on the rational design of functional foods for older adults. A co-extruded cereal prototype, fortified with two bioactive moieties, Maca root powder and Olive leaf extract, aims to address nutritional gaps identified in older adults, with a particular emphasis on high-quality and highly digestible proteins. Analytical determinations reveal the cereals have rich macronutrient profile exceeding 12% (w/w) protein, 20% (w/w) fat, and low sugar ( < 5% w/w), surpassing commercially available products with texture analyses supporting improved hardness, reduced oral friction and oral comfort. An untrained consumer panel (n=21, Age 73 ± 5) confirmed high palatability in various metrics and overall acceptability that were also affirmed through a trained sensory panel. Lastly, the product digestion was explored through an age-tailored in vitro digestion model which consistently demonstrated high protein digestibility, surpassing 80%, across all product formulations. Further, calculation of the in vitro digestible indispensable amino acid score of the product affirms its high nutritional quality. Thus, this study underscores the potential of designing palatable foods that could help promote a balanced and sustainable diet towards healthy aging.
Over the past years, significant efforts have been devoted to explore novel drug delivery and detection strategies for simultaneous therapy and diagnostics. The development of biotinylated polyurethane-urea nanopartic...
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Over the past years, significant efforts have been devoted to explore novel drug delivery and detection strategies for simultaneous therapy and diagnostics. The development of biotinylated polyurethane-urea nanoparticles as theranostic nanocarriers for targeted drug and plasmid delivery, for fluorescence detection of human hepatocellular carcinoma cells, is described herein. These targeted nanoparticles are specifically designed to incorporate biotin into the polymeric matrix, since many tumor types overexpress receptors for biotin as a mechanism to boost uncontrolled cell growth. The obtained nanoparticles were spherical, exhibited an average diameter ranging 110-145 nm, and showed no cytotoxicity in healthy endothelial cells. Biotinylated nanoparticles are selectively incorporated into the perinuclear and nuclear area of the human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, HepG2, in division, but not into growing, healthy, human endothelial cells. Indeed, the simultaneous incorporation of the anticancer drugs, phenoxodiol or sunitinib, together with plasmid DNA encoding green fluorescent protein, into these nanoparticles allows a targeted pharmacological antitumor effect and furthermore, selective transfection of a reporter gene, to detect these cancer cells. The combined targeted therapy and detection strategy described here could be exploited for liver cancer therapy and diagnostics, with a moderate safety profile, and may also be a potential tool for other types of cancer.
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