Chitosan is a cationic natural polysaccharide, which has emerged as an increasingly interesting biomaterialover the past few years. It constitutes a novel perspective in drug delivery systems and nanocarriers’ formulations due to its beneficial properties, including biocompatibility, biodegradability and low toxicity. The potentiality of chemical or enzymatic modifications of the biopolymer, as well as its complementary use with other polymers, further attract the scientific community, offering improved and combined properties in the final materials. As a result, chitosan has been extensively used as a matrix for the encapsulation of several valuable compounds. In this review article, the advantageous character of chitosan as a matrix for nanosystemsis presented, focusing on the encapsulation of natural products. A five-year literature review is attempted covering the use of chitosan and modified chitosan as matrices and coatings for the encapsulation of natural extracts, essential oils or pure naturally occurring bioactive compounds are discussed.

Covering only a small proportion (ca. 20%) of the greenhouse roof with photovoltaic panels contributes considerably to its energy demands without affecting plant growth and quality. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.

Over the past few years, nutraceuticals have gained substantial attention due to the health-promoting and disease-preventing functions behind their nutritional value. The global prevalence of nutraceuticals is reflected in the increasing number of commercially available nutraceuticals and their wide range of applications. Therefore, a unique opportunity emerges for their further exploration using innovative, reliable, accurate, low cost, and high hit rate methods to design and develop next generation nutraceuticals. Towards this direction, computational techniques constitute an influential trend for academic and industrial research, providing not only the chemical tools necessary for further mechanism characterization but also the starting point for the development of novel nutraceuticals. In the present review, an overview of nutraceuticals is discussed, underscoring the crucial role of chemoinformatic platforms, chemolibraries, and in silico techniques, as well as their perspectives in the development of novel nutraceuticals. This review also aims to record the latest advances and challenges in the area of nanonutraceuticals, an innovative field that capitalizes on the assets of nanotechnology for the encapsulation of bioactive components in order to improve their release profile and therapeutic efficacy.

In the current market, there is a growing interest in traditional herbal nutraceuticals. Therefore, herbal formulations have re-emerged as products with sought-after nutraceutical and disease-preventing properties. The health-promoting effects of herbal bioactives are attributed to the active phytoconstituents of these plants. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the putative nutraceutical effectiveness of the preparations of ten herbs (chamomile, purple coneflower, lemon verbena, pennyroyal, spearmint, oregano, marjoram, headed savory, sea buckthorn, and St. John’s wort) by combining in silico techniques and LC-MS/MS analysis. The binding potential of the selected phenolic compounds, according to literature and web databases, was investigated by using molecular target prediction tools. Aldose reductase (AR), an enzyme of polyol pathway which is related to hyperglycemic-induced pathologies, emerged as the most promising molecular target. The molecular docking results showed that rosmarinic acid, caftaric acid, naringenin, and quercetin presented the highest binding affinity. In a further step, the phytochemical profile of the examined infusions, obtained by LC-MS/MS analysis, revealed that the abovementioned compounds were present, mainly in the herbs of the Lamiaceae family, designating headed savory as the herbal infusion with possible significant inhibitory activity against AR.

Edible mushrooms contain biologically active compounds with antioxidant, antimicrobial, immunomodulatory and anticancer properties. The link between their anticancer and immunomodulatory properties with their possible prebiotic activity on gut micro-organisms has been the subject of intense research over the last decade. Lyophilized Pleurotus eryngii (PE) mushrooms, selected due to their strong lactogenic effect and anti-genotoxic, immunomodulatory properties, underwent in vitro static batch fermentation for 24 h by fecal microbiota from eight elderly apparently healthy volunteers (>65 years old). The fermentation-induced changes in fecal microbiota communities were examined using Next Generation Sequencing of the hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene. Primary processing and analysis were conducted using the Ion Reporter Suite. Changes in the global metabolic profile were assessed by 1H NMR spectroscopy, and metabolites were assigned by 2D NMR spectroscopy and the MetaboMiner platform. PLS-DA analysis of both metataxonomic and metabolomic data showed a significant cluster separation of PE fermented samples relative to controls. DEseq2 analysis showed that the abundance of families such as Lactobacillaceae and Bifidobacteriaceae were increased in PE samples. Accordingly, in metabolomics, more than twenty metabolites including SCFAs, essential amino acids, and neurotransmitters discriminate PE samples from the respective controls, further validating the metataxonomic findings.