Encapsulation of probiotic bacteria in an oleogel

Sammanfattning: Probiotic bacteria administered orally that aim to reach the intestine alive need protection to be able to survive the human gastrointestinal tract. Ethyl cellulose is one food-grade material that can be used with oil to form an oleogel. This oleogel can encapsulate probiotics and provide physical protection. This project focuses on analysing different oleogel formulations, which are made with ethyl cellulose and maltodextrin. This project also focuses on evaluating the methods used to analyse the oleogel formulations. An in vitro model simulating the small intestine was used in combination with qPCR to analyse the releasing of the encapsulated oil and probiotic bacteria. Oleogel formulations with different ethyl cellulose molecular weight (22 cP and 46 cP) were significantly different regarding both in vitro and qPCR results. No significant difference was seen when altering the oleogels maltodextrin concentration. The in vitro method needs small improvements regarding sample position fixing to allow for more reproducible results. qPCR may provide uncertain results because the in vitro solution may destroy probiotic DNA. Another method-pair approach, for more accurately analysing oleogel release of probiotics, using microbiological water followed by qPCR and/or cultivating methods have been suggested.