Nanoparticles and nanofibers obtained from whey protein concentrate

MURATORI PC ; PERILLO MA; BURGOS I

Córdoba

Congreso; VII Congreso Internacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia de Alimentos (CICYTAC) 2018; 2018

Mincyt Córdoba

In the context of aspecific regional problem involving large quantities of waste from the dairyindustry, with a significant environmental impact, we propose the reuse of oneof the most abundant wastes, whey serum, rich in proteins, for the synthesis ofbiomaterials with biotechnological interest. Nanoparticles (Nps) synthesizedfrom whey proteins concentrate (WPC) are of interest to be used as nano-transportersof molecules of low solubility or stability. On the other hand, with the samewhey proteins self-aggregated into fibrilar nano-structures (Nfs), we proposedto synthesize protein films with various biotechnological applications. Here wehave applied different protocols (with and without SDS, different incubationtimes (IT) at 85°C, desalting), and obtained Nps with WPC desalted in theabsence of SDS and 1 hour IT. The NPs observed in TEM images were round and thediameters ranged between 20 and 150 nm, and the median was 44 nm. Nfs wereobtained with desalted WPC in the presence of 1% SDS and 15 minutes IT. TEMimages showed that the Nfs were mainly a supercoiled structure of 50 nm ofthickness and 0.8 mm lengthapproximately. Further characterization of the nanostructures was performed byanalytical centrifugation, dynamic light scattering and N2 BETisotherms. This information will be usefull for the set up of drugadsorption/desorption experiments in a next research step.