In vitro degradation of zein nanofibres for propolis release in oral treatments

The fabrication of water soluble nanofibres based on proteins from vegetable source currently represents an emerging strategy to massively release active principles via rapid degradation in targeted sites. In this work, propolis loaded nanofibres made of zein, were fabricated via electrospinning. The gradual increase of propolis content promotes a reduction of fibre diameters from 425 +/- 212 to 116 +/- 83 due to non-covalent interactions between carboxyl groups of phenolic compounds and protein amide groups as confirmed by FTIR spectra. Accordingly, in vitro degradation studies via UV spectra also proved that selected compounds such as diferuloylputrescine (DFP) can be more slowly released-after 48 h-in the presence of propolis. This enable to design nanofibrous devices really promising to face inflammatory diseases due to the presence of lesions in the oral cavity.