Enhancing the stability and the delivery of lactoferrin for prevention and/or treatment of covid-19 respiratory disease.

Project Description

Lactoferrin (LF) is a glycoprotein which is widely contained in many secretory fluids, mainly milk but also saliva, tears, and nasal secretions. Many scientific reports supported an application of this glycoprotein in the prophylaxis and treatment of covid-19 syndrome. Although, its mechanism of action has not been fully understood, it has been hypothesized that LF could counteract the coronavirus infection and inflammation, acting either as natural barrier of both respiratory and intestinal mucosa or reverting the iron disorders related to the viral colonization. Unfortunately, the use of LF is severely hampered by its poor stability in water/aqueous solution due to both unfolding andenzymatic degradation, which occurs in the gastrointestinal tract. In fact, LF concentrations in refrigerated HM samples were stable for only 5 days. Notably, LF degrades in more than half of the time in the acidic gastric fluids. To mitigate the instability and improve the delivery of this active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), a nanofabrication strategy will be undertaken via layer-by-layer deposition of concentric layers of hyaluronic acid and chitosan-N-acetylcysteine. This approach has already offered effectiveness in extending the activity of other protein APIs we have recently formulated by>10 times.Once the nanofabrication process will have been optimized, these formulations and the naked LF will finally under gostability testing by applying different temperatures and pHs and checking thereafter the effects that this has had on the endurance of the catalytic activity of LF