Artificial intelligence is allowing us to sort through huge numbers of molecules or microorganisms in the search of novel ingredients, but once you have candidates, you still need to test them in living creatures.
Layered onto that is the push from regulators in some parts of the world, and consumers, to find alternatives to mammalian testing. Texas-based NemaLife has developed a screening platform using microscopic worms on a chip to deliver rapid, affordable, and actionable whole-life data.
Speaking with NutraIngredients at the recent SupplySide West in Las Vegas, Dhaval Patel, PhD, NemaLife’s Director of Research & Innovation, explained that, while the C. elegans worms are one of the earliest lifeforms on the planet, there’s a lot of biology that’s conserved from the worm all the way up to humans.
“So that makes them a very attractive model for studying ingredients and understanding if they have the effects that they will ultimately have in humans,” said Dr Patel. “So even though they’re very tiny, they have this amazing ability to inform us on really useful human translational biology.
“The premise of our chip is basically trying to minimize the amount of sample that you need to give an organism during testing. A lot of companies here [at SupplySide West] are doing a lot of early-stage R&D and they don’t have a lot of material at that stage, but they need to know what the functional benefit of that nutraceutical or probiotic is. Because if you know what that functional benefit is, you can then justify putting in the money to scale up manufacture and then doing that more intensive testing that comes with getting that product ready for market.”
NemaLife builds nematode-based ingredient screening pipeline for rapid, affordable, and actionable results - NutraIngredients-usa.com
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