Nanoemulsion encapsulation of polyphenols from honeybee pollen increases quercetin permeability in wt-MDCK monolayers

Abstract

Abstract Honeybee pollen (HBP) is a bee product composed of flower pollen collected from diverse plant species. Traditionally, HBP has been used in both healing and human nutrition for its wide range of secondary plant metabolites, including phenolic compounds. Yet, while these natural compounds are currently arousing attention due to their beneficial health effects, they have a limited ability to cross biological barriers and hence present low bioavailability. Quercetin was proposed as a phenolic marker for quality control in Chilean HBP. This study determined the effects of encapsulation in a multiple W/O/W nanoemulsion by using epithelial MDCK-C7 cells as a permeability model. The results indicate that the multiple nanoemulsion enhanced the in vitro permeability of encapsulated quercetin. The apparent permeability (Papp) of quercetin in cells treated with the HBP-loaded multiple nanoemulsion (HBP-MNE) was 19.1 ± 0.92 x 10− 6 cm/s, which was significantly higher than that of the free HBP extract (9.28 ± 0.47 x 10− 6 cm/s), suggesting that the nanoencapsulation procedure enabled quercetin flux through the epithelium. Our findings showed that the multiple nanoemulsion improved the permeability of encapsulated quercetin in vitro. Further research in animal models or human studies is now encouraged.