Microbial Polysaccharide-Based Nanoformulations for Nutraceutical Delivery.

In recent times, nutrition and diet have become prominent health paradigms due to sedentary lifestyle disorders. Preventive health care strategies are becoming increasingly popular instead of treating and managing diseases. A nutraceutical is an innovative concept that offers additional health benefits beyond its fundamental nutritional value. These nutraceuticals have the potential to reduce the exorbitant use of synthetic drugs because the modern medicine approach of treating diseases with high-tech, expensive supplements, and long-term consequences aggravates consumers. However, most nutraceuticals are plant-derived, making them susceptible to degradation and prone to chemical instability, poor solubility, unpleasant taste, and bioactivity loss before absorption to the targeted site. To counteract this problem, the bioavailability of these labile compounds can be maximized by encapsulating them in protective nanocarriers. It is crucial that nanoencapsulation technologies convert bioactive compounds into forms that can be easily combined with functional foods and beverages without adversely affecting their organoleptic properties. In recent years, nanoformulations using food-grade materials, such as polysaccharides, proteins, lipids, etc., have received considerable attention. Among them, microbial polysaccharides are biocompatible, nontoxic, and nonimmunogenic, and most of them are US-FDA approved and can undergo tailored modifications. The nanoformulation of microbial polysaccharide is a relatively new frontier which has several advantages over existing systems. The present article, for the first time, comprehensively reviews microbial polysaccharides-based nanodelivery systems for nutraceuticals and discusses various techno-commercial aspects of these nanotechnological preparations. Moreover, this has also attempted to draw a future research perspective in this area.