Recently, Professor Cao Chongjiang's team from the School of Engineering at our university published their latest research findings in the top-tier journal Advanced Functional Materials, titled “Probiotics Behavior-Inspired Biomimetic Platform for Ulcerative Colitis Prevention and Therapy.” Wang Mengjun, a doctoral student from the class of 2021, and postdoctoral researcher Nian Linyu are the co-first authors of the paper, with Professor Cao Chongjiang as the corresponding author. China Pharmaceutical University is the sole corresponding institution for the paper.
As a food functional factor, probiotics have shown promising effects in nutritional interventions for chronic diseases such as ulcerative colitis (UC). However, the potential risks of bacteremia and sepsis associated with their use limit their widespread application in nutritional interventions for gastrointestinal diseases. Probiotic-derived outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), as a non-live bacterial formulation, retain the biological activity and functions of probiotics without posing the risk of bacteremia, demonstrating significant application potential in nutritional interventions for chronic diseases like UC. However, oral administration of probiotic OMVs alone results in rapid dilution by gastrointestinal fluids, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) at inflammatory sites can damage their structure, leading to low bioavailability.
To address these scientific challenges, the research team drew inspiration from the natural secretion of OMVs by probiotics and their intestinal colonization behavior, loading probiotic OMVs into a bio-inspired probiotic (OSM) constructed using a double-continuous ordered mesoporous metal-phenol formaldehyde network (SP-MPNs). further utilizing ascorbyl palmitate (AP) hydrogels to protect OSM and confer precise targeting to inflammatory sites. Upon reaching the inflammatory site, OSM can mitigate oxidative stress-induced intestinal barrier damage by scavenging ROS at the site, thereby preventing structural damage to OMVs. Additionally, OSM responds to the overexpression of transferrin (Tf) at the inflammatory site by slowly releasing OMVs, exerting long-lasting anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects. Additionally, the catechol functional groups in OSM can interact with mucins in the intestinal mucus layer, thereby prolonging the residence time of OSM in the intestine and improving the bioavailability of OMVs. This study provides new insights for precise nutritional intervention in chronic diseases such as UC.
The aforementioned work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Jiangsu Province Outstanding Young Scholars Program.
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Article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202505817
