Proceedings of International Congress on Bioactive Compounds and International Workshop on Bioactive Compounds
Proceedings of 1st International Congress on Bioactive Compounds and 2nd International Workshop on Bioactive Compounds - Vol. 1 - 2018

Currently, there are a wide variety of compounds such as anthocyanins, carotenoids, flavonoids and polyphenols amongst others are being used for food and nutraceutical purposes. From the commercial point of view, anthocyanins, betalains and carotenoids are used in large scale for red, orange and yellow hues while natural green and blue colorants are few, thus making room to search for novel pigment sources such as unexploited fruits and vegetables. In this context, the iridoid blue-based pigments (IBBP, particularly genipin) from genipap (Genipa americana L.) has emerging as a natural alternative to synthetic ones for food applications as well as to exert desirable biological effects on human health. For this reason, much effort has been focused on improving colorant extraction, purification and stability as well as to satisfy the related hygiene and safety criteria as prerequisite to the approval of food regulatory authorities. Thus, being motivated by the possible applications of genipin isolated from genipap (Genipa americana L.) as a precursor of natural blue pigments, the proposed study emphasized their potential health benefits for the food and pharmaceutical areas. Therefore, the goal of our study was based on four pillars: 2) to produce and to characterize the IBBP solid lipid microparticles (IBBP-SLM) through the spray chilling technique and 3) to evaluate the biological profiles of both IBBP extract and its microparticle (IBBP-SLM) through of the bioacessibility of its target components, antiproliferative activity and in vitro genotoxicity evaluation. Thus, our results indicated that the spray chilling technique for the production of lipid microparticles containing IBBP extract had a weak performance in protecting the IBBP from degradation. With respect to the digestion effects on samples, it was observed that most of the iridoid contents changed during the digestion process. In particular, our findings showed that iridoids of IBBP-SLM degraded during in vitro digestion, leaving just genipin 1-β-gentibioside remaining after intestinal phase. Results also showed that microencapsulation process has influence on antioxidant capacity of IBBP-SLM. In spite of antioxidant capacities of both the IBBP extract and the IBBP-SLM were significantly higher (p<0.05) after digestion meaning (IP= 46% and 100%, respectivelly). Nevertheles, the IBBP-SLM seemed to exert desirable effects and apoptosis induction (at 25 µg/mL dosage), where it was observed that IBBP-SLM (25 µg/mL) reached the maximum PS exposure at 12 h for HL60 (62.1% of Annexin V/PI positive cells) while the IBBP-SLM induced 42.9 and 41.5% of PS exposition on the NALM6 and JURKAT cell lines in 24 h and 28.9%o NB4 cell lines in 48 h, when compared to untreated cells (0%), respectivelly. This study describes for the first time the encapsulation iridoids blue-based pigments belonging to genipap has been as well as conducting bioaccessibility tests through simulated in vitro digestion and biological assays. Thus, this study represents an innovation hotspot in the strategic exploration of genipap fruit as a novel source of blue natural colorants with functional appeal, besides stimulating new lines of research regarding comprehensive studies on encapsulation efficiency, toxicity, metabolism and distribution.

The authors thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, grant number 2015/50333-1), National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, grant number 481670/2013-0) and Institute of International Education (CAPES) for financial support.