Chitosan-gum Arabic complex nanocarriers for encapsulation of saffron bioactive components

Introduction

In recent years, researchers are looking for different strategies in order to elevate the functionality and biocompatibility of pharmaceutical and food bioactive components using nanotechnology relying on biopolymers [[1], [2], [3]]. It has been proved that this technology can improve the bioavailability of food and pharmaceutical active compounds [4,5] and inhibit the degradation of nutraceuticals such as antioxidants, enzymes, phenolic compounds, and micronutrients in unfavorable environmental conditions [6]. Ionic/ionotropic gelation, sometimes called as polyelectrolyte gelation/complexation is an efficient and applicable method for nanoencapsulation as a result of applying nontoxic and highly biocompatible polymers [7]. This complexation is formed through the mixing of oppositely charged biopolymers in solutions at very low concentrations; lower than their gelling points, and their interaction mainly driven by hydrogen bonds, electrostatic associations and hydrophobic interactions [8,9], makes it essential to investigate the effect of structural composition and the ratio between the polymers [10]. Chitosan as a cationic polyelectrolyte is highly applicable in the pharmaceutics and food industry owing to its unique properties such as mucoadhesiveness, nontoxicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and extractibility from an economical and plentiful source [[11], [12], [13]]. Due to the ionization of the amine groups of this biomolecule in acidic pH values, chitosan becomes water-soluble and positively-charged. This feature provides a basis for the reaction of chitosan with other negatively-charged macromolecules such as gum Arabic, carboxymethyl cellulose, alginate and heparine and resulting in the formation of complexed nanoparticles. Various reports have been presented about the reaction of chitosan with different biopolymers/ions for the preparation of bioactive-loaded nanoparticles. Among them, we can refer to the reaction between chitosan and tripolyphosphate [[14], [15], [16]], polyacrylic acid [4], gum Arabic [4,17,18], chitosan self-assembly [19] and reverse micellar carriers [20]. Different bioactive components have been also encapsulated through this approach including insulin [17,21,22], curcumin [16,18], bovine serum albumin [[23], [24], [25]] and various types of drugs [26]. Gum Arabic, a highly branched arabinogalactan-type polysaccharide is also a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer which readily dissolves in water up to 50% and its extremely compact structure gets easily opened in neutral pH values due to the dissociation of its hydroxyl groups, resulting in a high level of negative charged groups [27]. This brings about an increase in the number of gum Arabic reaction sites and negative charges compared with other biomolecules, thus providing a suitable condition for reaction with chitosan during ionic gelation [17]. Saffron, Crocus sativus L., is a perennial plant belonging to the Iridaceae family and Liliales order. The bioactive compounds of this plant includes picrocrocin (bitter taste of saffron), safranal (its main volatile compound and aroma) and crocin, a glycosidic ester of crocetin (color of saffron) [28]. Unique medicinal properties have been reported for saffron such as anticancer, anti-depression and anti-convulsion effects, which are majorly attributed to crocin [29,30]. Similar to most of the other herbal bioactive compounds which suffer from instability, crocin is susceptible to environmental conditions, particularly light and heat and degrades rapidly [28]. Production of nanocarriers via ionic gelation between two oppositely charged biopolymers is an innovative and biocompatible techniques which has been mainly applied for the encapsulation of drugs, proteins and genes. The purpose of this study was to prepare saffron-loaded nanocomplexes through IG between chitosan and gum Arabic and evaluate the properties of final nanocarriers and release of saffron extract from these delivery systems. The prepared nanoparticles were examined in terms of particle size, zeta potential, morphology, crystalline structure, encapsulation efficiency, and release.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

Before sunrise, saffron was harvested from a field near Kashmar, Iran and the saffron stigmas were dried according to the method previously described by Rajabi, et al. [28]. In brief, after separation of stigmas from the flower, they were dried using a microwave oven at a power of 1000 W. Then, they were ground and passed through a sieve with a pore size of 0.421 mm. The resulting saffron powder was poured into a dark bottle and stored inside a desiccator for further experiments. Chitosan

Saffron-loaded nanocomplex properties

The TEM images of the formulation for F4 (G₁C₁S₁₅) and F7 (G₅C₁₀S₁₀) are illustrated in Fig. 1. Assessment of these images revealed that the chitosan-gum Arabic nanocomplexes manufactured by these two treatments were nearly spherical with smooth surfaces and diameters of about 183–295 nm. These results conformed to those reported by Alishahi, et al. [14] who declared that the nanocapsules of vitamin C produced by chitosan (CS) and sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP) were smooth-surfaced and

Conclusion

Saffron is a medicinal plant with numerous applications in food and pharmaceutical industries. The bioactive compounds of this valuable plant are easily degraded when exposed to light, heat and oxygen. One of the major applications of polymer-based nanocarriers is the protection of bioactive compounds against unfavorable environmental conditions. In the present research, nanoencapsulation of saffron extract was carried out using CS and GA through ionic gelation. Higher GA and CS concentrations

Declarations of interest

None.

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