From left: Nuritas founder and chief science officer Dr Nora Khaldi with CEO Emmet Browne. Image: Kieran Harnett
Discovery of bioactive peptides could benefit billions of lives.
Irish entrepreneur Nora Khaldi’s Nuritas is collaborating with food giant Nestlé to discover bioactive peptide networks within natural food sources.
Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company, with a presence in 191 countries and 328,000 global employees.
‘As our understanding of food and nutrition continues to grow, our global research and development network is looking ahead to discover how we can help enhance quality of life and contribute to a healthier future for everyone’
– RICHARD STADLER
As part of the collaboration, Nuritas will deploy its award-winning and novel technology platform, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and DNA analysis to predict, unlock and validate highly efficacious peptides, exclusively from natural food sources.
Cutting the cost of discovery
The Nuritas platform will help to cut the time and cost of discovering new ingredients for health promotion, disease prevention and medicines.
For example, bioactive peptides are known to play a role in managing diabetes and many other areas, but the current methods of identifying those that may work is time-consuming, inefficient and expensive.
That’s where Nuritas’s fusing of AI and DNA analysis comes in.
“At Nuritas, our mission is to positively impact billions of lives worldwide and we therefore are delighted to be collaborating with Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, on such an important project,” said Dr Nora Khaldi, founder and chief scientific officer of Nuritas and a speaker at Inspirefest 2016 in Dublin.
For its part, Nestlé will use its considerable scientific know-how and applications expertise to validate the efficacy of these new discoveries within the target applications.
“As our understanding of food and nutrition continues to grow, our global research and development network is looking ahead to discover how we can help enhance quality of life and contribute to a healthier future for everyone,” Richard Stadler from the Nestlé Research Centre explained.
“Research partnerships such as that with Nuritas help us achieve that goal.”
The results of Nuritas’s research could lead to the discovery of new food components to help prevent, manage and even cure deadly diseases.
In December, it emerged that the company secured €16m Series A funding led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, bringing its total investment to date to approximately €25m.
Founded in 2014, Nuritas boasts some pretty well-known funders from previous rounds, including Bono and The Edge from U2, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
