Obesity is a rising worldwide epidemic nowadays which causes bad effects on human, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Non-invasive strategy of weight management like inducing satiety is preferable since the bariatric treatment can lead to iron deficiency anemia and reoperations. Nutrients like oil which are delivered to distal intestinal (ileum) can induce satiety. To achieve this 'ileal brake' strategy, sodium alginate (SA) has been used to control the oil release during digestion. Ca-alginate beads has been used to encapsulate oil droplets, in this system, we aim to investigate the deeper relationship between the characteristics of alginate-based hydrogels beads and their controlled-release capacity of oil.

To promote the application of alginate-based hydrogel delivery system in weight management, this project will be focusing on the aspects of:

• Effect of alginate type on the encapsulation of oil in alginate-based hydrogel beads
• Characterizations of alginate-based hydrogel beads
• Release profiles of oil in hydrogel delivery system during in vitro digestion
• Kinetics of enzyme diffusion and oil hydrolysis
• Design of encapsulation towards precision nutrition delivery