POLYMERIC COLLOIDAL CARRIERS FOR NATURAL POLYPHENOLIC COMPOUNDS

Natural polyphenolic compounds are major micronutrients in our diet. They possess interesting antioxidant properties and play an important dietary role in reducing the risk of inflammation, neurodegenerative, and chronic diseases such as dysmetabolic pathologies. These abilities make polyphenols interesting for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and nutraceutical fields. Unfortunately, they have a series of drawbacks that reduce their use such as high molecular weight, complex chemical structure, low water solubility, sensitivity to light and heat with consequently limited stability, and product shelf life. All these factors reduce bioavailability; limited dissolution rate and degradation at extreme pH values, resulting in less or no therapeutic effects. Besides that, polyphenols have extensive phase II metabolism and rapid elimination. Oral use and patient compliance are often limited by their astringent and bitter taste. The formulation of polymeric colloidal carriers could overcome these drawbacks allowing more efficient and stable products. This chapter will focus on the relevant recent scientific literature in the past few years regarding this topic. In particular, we analyzed the use of biocompatible natural and synthetic polymers able to formulate micro- and nanosystems with an improvement of the physicochemical, biological, and technological polyphenolic characteristics.