Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Integrated operational strategy for the safety investigation of novel ...
Highlights
Coordinator
New breeding techniques like genome editing will be used to produce customised safety food and to generate lines with an improved nutritional profile covering both compounds with beneficial properties and reducing anti-nutritional components. Biotechnological processes will be used to eliminate toxic compounds to produce new food/beverages from novel substrates. Tailored (bio)technological approaches will be set up to valorise alternative protein sources (i.e., cricket powder, micro- and macro-algae, single cell proteins, and yeast biomasses, agri-food and fishery by-products, insect-based foods. Set- up of a safe system of cellular agriculture for the development of novel food, like cultured meat and cheese in connection with Spoke 2 and 4)
Protocol for the development of novel and innovative food/beverages (M36)
Many foods and food ingredients are deemed safe by their traditional history of safe use in humans, whereas, in agreement with the Novel Food Regulation of 1997, foods which have not been consumed in Europe before May 1997 are considered novel and their safety aspects need to be addressed before they may be marketed. It is noteworthy that the majority of novel foods are used as ingredients and none are without some level of risk, whose hazard might be caused by the high concentration, the presence of some antinutrients or chemicals as well as the interaction with other compounds.
The actual risk of a novel food must be tested considering the expected intake and the proposed target population, thus novel foods need to be tested as they are intended to be marketed. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) guidance documents suggest a tiered approach to produce scientific data, that consists in testing foods starting from in vitro experiments and then shifting to in vivo ones for assessing potential risk.
An integrated strategy and tailored methodological approach (biochemical and bioanalytical tools and single or co-culture cell models) will be developed and applied for the safety investigation of the traditional and novel foods/food ingredients. The project will focus mainly on protein hydrolysates/peptides from plant or animal origins and phytocomplexes.
The effects of traditional and novel ingredients on the viability and morphology of human hepatic HepG2, human kidney HK-2, human intestinal Caco-2 cells and co-colture system in which differentiated Caco-2 model is combined with HepG2 and HK-2 cells, will be assessed by performing MTT assay, microscope analysis, CyP450 modulation on HepG2 cells, oxidative stress (Reactive Oxygen Species and lipid peroxidation evaluation), inflammation (pro- and ant-inflammatory cytockines measurement), and cell death assessment (apoptosis, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), transaminases AST/ALT, sign of hepato- and renal- toxicity, evaluation).
Using differentiated Caco-2 cells, their effects on the functional and structural integrity and stability of human intestinal brush border barrier will be assessed through the combination of molecular (western blot analysis) and functional techniques (trans-epithelial electric resistance (TEER) measurement and red phenol passage), respectively.
This project will provide integrated results regarding the safety of selected food derived hydrolysates/phytocomplexes, firstly defining the absorbed and biomodified fraction employing Caco-2 cells, and then investigating whether the absorbed components exert some hepatotoxicity, using a Caco-2/HepG2 coculture. Renal toxicity will be investigated as well, besides assessing in parallel whether novel matrices exert toxicity on intestine cellular model.
In addition, this project will provide an integrated and versatile operational approach that can be applied for the safety investigation of different ingredients/matrices for developing novel food/beverages.
