Sea buckthorn Flavonols extract co-loaded Zein/gum Arabic nanoparticles: Evaluating cellular absorption in Caco-2 cells and antioxidant activity in HepG2 cells

Improving sea buckthorn flavonoids (SF) stability and bioacccessibility is of more practical significance for evaluating the total bioacccessibility of such foods. Therefore, we prepared nanoparticles using zein and gum Arabic (GA) by anti-solvent precipitation to encapsulate SF. Nanoparticles were characterized and assessed for their effect on the stability, release, bioaccessibility, absorption, and antioxidant properties of SF in the in vitro digestion and cell line. The uniform, regular nanoparticles achieved 77.19 % encapsulation efficiency. The SF retention rates during long-term storage (60.46 %) and in vitro digestion (53.76 %) demonstrated that nanoparticles exhibited good stability and bioaccessibility compared to free SF. Furthermore, cellular absorption, the free radical scavenging rate for ABTS (85.26 %) and DPPH (80.48 %), as well as inhibitory effects on intracellular ROS further demonstrated that bilayer nanoparticles could successfully protect and exert biological characteristics of SF. This study evaluated the overall bioaccessibility of sea buckthorn flavonoids using a nanoparticle delivery system, which holds even greater significance for guiding the development of this category of natural foods.