Research Article
Ticiana Alexandra Valle, &A
Abstract
The bacterium Zymomonas mobilis has the ability to produce several organic acids from mixtures of fructose and different aldoses as an alternative to glucose. One of these organic acids, lactobionic acid, is produced from the oxidation of lactose and is produced in equimolar amounts with sorbitol, a product of fructose reduction. Sorbitol is widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industry, while lactobionic acid has important applications in medicine and cosmetics. It has been reported in the literature that lactobionic acid has the potential for drug vectorization, particularly for anti-tumor drugs. The objective of this work is to show that lactobionic acid produced by Zymomonas mobilis can be used for targeted delivery of chemotherapeutic agents. Using analytical techniques such as HPLC, NMR and polarimetry, we showed that lactobionic acid produced in Zymomonas mobilis is of high purity (100%) when compared to the 97% pure lactobionic acid salt from Sigma®, which was used as a reference. In addition, the lactobionic acid made from Zymomonas was free of any contaminants or racemic isomers and had an open chain, suggesting its suitability for targeted delivery of nanoparticle drugs.