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Reproducible in vitro studies of bioaccessibility, intestinal absorption and bioavailability are key to the successful development of novel food ingredients or drugs aiming for oral administration. There is currently a...

The ability to fabricate materials with ultrathin architectures enables the breakthrough of low‐dimensional structures with high surface area that showcase distinctive properties from their bulk counterparts. They are exploited in a wide range of fields, including energy harvesting, catalysis, and biomedicine. Despite such versatility, the fine tuning of the lateral dimensions and geometry of these structures remains challenging. Prepatterned platforms gain significant attention as enabling technologies to process materials with highly controlled shapes and dimensions. Herein, different nanometer‐thick particles of various lateral sizes and geometries (e.g., squares, circles, triangles, hexagons) are processed with high precision and definition, taking advantage of the wettability contrast of oleophilic–oleophobic patterned surfaces. Quasi‐2D polymeric microparticles with high shape‐ and size‐fidelity can be retrieved as freestanding objects in a single step. These structures show cell‐mediated pliability, and their integration in gravity‐enforced human adipose‐derived stem cell spheroids leads to an enhanced metabolic activity and a modulated secretion of proangiogenic factors.

Obesity is associated with metabolic and physiological effects in the gut. In this study, we evaluated the anti-inflammatory effect of trypsin inhibitor isolated from tamarind seeds (TTI) in vitro (interaction with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and inhibitory activity against human neutrophil elastase (HNE)), and using intestinal co-cultures of Caco-2:HT29-MTX cell lines inflamed with TNF-α (50 ng/mL) and a Wistar rat model of diet-induced obesity (n = 15). TTI was administered to animals by gavage (10 days), and the treated group (25 mg/kg/day) was compared to animals without treatment or treated with a nutritionally adequate diet. In the in vitro study, it showed inhibitory activity against HNE (93%). In co-cultures, there was no protection or recovery of the integrity of inflamed cell monolayers treated with TTI (1.0 mg/mL). In animals, TTI led to lower plasma concentrations of TNF-α and IL-6, total leukocytes, fasting glucose, and LDL-c (p < 0.05). The intestines demonstrated a lower degree of chronic enteritis, greater preservation of the submucosa, and greater intestinal wall thickness than the other groups (p = 0.042). Therefore, the better appearance of the intestine not reflected in the intestinal permeability added to the in vitro activity against HNE point to possibilities for new studies and applications related to this activity.

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