Encapsulation of probiotics: insights into academic and industrial approaches

The natural inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract play a key role in the maintenance of human health. Over the last century, the changes on the behavior of our modern society have impacted the diversity of this gut microbiome. Among the strategies to restore gut microbial homeostasis, the use of probiotics has received a lot of attention. Probiotics are living microorganisms that promote the host health when administered in adequate amounts. Its popularity increase in the marketplace in the last decade draws the interest of scientists in finding suitable methods capable of delivering adequate amounts of viable cells into the gastrointestinal tract. Encapsulation comes into the scene as an approach to enhance the cells survival during processing, storage and consumption.
This paper provides a comprehensive perspective of the probiotic field at present time focusing on the academia and industry scenarios in the past few years in terms of encapsulation technologies employed and research insights including patents. The analysis of the encapsulation technologies considering food processing costs and payload of viable bacteria reaching the gastrointestinal tract would result into successful market novelties. There is yet a necessity to bridge the gap between academia and industry.