Probiotics have gained significant attention owing to their roles in regulating human health. Recently, spray drying has been considered as a promising technique to produce probiotic powders due to its advantages of high efficiency, cost-saving, and good powder properties. However, the severe environmental conditions from drying and digestion can significantly reduce cell viability, resulting in poor bioaccessibility and bioavailability of live cells. Therefore, there is a need to develop effective targeted delivery systems using spray drying to protect bacteria and to maintain their physiological functions in the targeted sites. This review highlights recent studies about spray-dried targeted delivery vehicles for probiotics, focusing on key strategies to protect bacteria when encountering external stresses, the formation mechanism of particles, the targeted release and colonization mechanisms of live cells in particles with different structures. Advances in the targeted delivery of live probiotics via spray-dried vehicles are still in their early stages. To increase the possibilities for industrialization and commercialization, functional improvement of microcapsules in terms of protection, targeted release, and colonization of bacteria, as well as the effect of spray drying on bacterial physiological functions in the host, need to be further investigated.
Keywords: Probiotics; microcapsules; particle structure; spray drying; targeted delivery.