A new study from Pedro Fonte and his team, published in Food Bioscience (Q1, Impact Factor 6.2), explores an innovative strategy for the simultaneous delivery of bioactive compounds with contrasting physicochemical properties.

The article, “Engineering lipid nanoparticles for dual-polarity bioactive delivery: Cold homogenization as a strategy for functional foods”, investigates cold homogenization as an approach to develop solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) capable of simultaneously encapsulating hydrophilic caffeine and lipophilic curcumin.

Key Highlights

• High encapsulation efficiency: over 90% for both caffeine and curcumin, despite their contrasting polarities.
• High retention: more than 98% of the bioactives were retained over 72 hours.
• Sustained release: both nanoparticle systems provided controlled co-release without burst effects.
• Potential for functional foods: the use of food-grade, GRAS-compliant excipients and mild processing conditions supports the potential application of this strategy in next-generation functional foods and beverages.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the efficient co-encapsulation of hydrophilic caffeine and lipophilic curcumin within a single lipid nanoparticle system using cold homogenization, providing a versatile and potentially scalable platform for functional food engineering.

This work results from an international collaboration between Brazil and Portugal, bringing together researchers from UFVJM – Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, Egas Moniz School of Health & Science, Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa (iBB and i4HB), Universidade de Coimbra, and Universidade do Algarve (CCMAR). See more.