Production and characterization of nanovesicles mimetics from probiotics

• Main Author: Neo, Hui Yi
• Other Authors: Czarny Bertrand Marcel Stanislas
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147829
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Probiotics are a class of bacteria which when administered in sufficient amounts, provide a health benefit on the host. In the past decade, more scientific evidence has shown that probiotics have medicinal benefits such as antimicrobial effects and their naturally secreted membrane vesicles could provide as potential drug delivery systems and vaccines. The applications of such membrane vesicles are limited due to the low production yield and tedious process, which requires more manpower and longer processing time to isolate the vesicles. Hence, this project is focused on producing such bacteria-derived nanovesicles mimetics from probiotics using a different protocol that can act as an alternative to the extraction of naturally secreted membrane vesicles (MVs). The vesicle production protocol was first optimized for three specific probiotic strains, Lactobacillus Rhamnosus GG (LGG), Lactococcus Lactis (LCL), and Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (ECN). After which, the samples were characterized to identify the properties and production yield of the vesicles. The protocol utilizing spin cups in this project was found to be ineffective for the probiotic strains, whereas the pressure extruder method was able to produce bacteria- derived nanovesicles mimetics from the probiotic strains. These nanovesicles mimetics were then tested for their antimicrobial properties in comparison to the original probiotic bacteria strains. Unfortunately, these bacteria-derived nanovesicles mimetics did not show any antimicrobial effect against the tested pathogenic bacteria strains. However, further work needs to be done to optimize the protocol and validate these results, before any conclusions can be made. Ultimately, this project serves as a first step towards producing nanovesicles mimetics from probiotics, such that these manually produced vesicles could be utilized as an alternative to probiotics bacteria. This will only be possible when we develop the most optimized protocol to efficiently produce nanovesicles mimetics from probiotics that can mimic the properties of naturally secreted bacteria MVs.