Nuritas and Nestlé will use artificial intelligence to find bioactive peptides in the food we eat for applications including diabetes, anti-aging, and animal and plant health.
Nuritas wants to revolutionize the discovery of natural active ingredients that can support and improve human health. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to look closely at the foods we eat to find peptides that could provide extraordinary benefits. The biotech has joined forces with Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, which will provide its expertise in the area of food and nutrition to validate the biotech’s discoveries.
Nuritas’ approach is made up of 3 stages. Step 1 precisely defines the health condition being targeted to improve the chances of finding an effective peptide. Step 2 uses AI to predict the food-derived bioactive peptides that could boost health or treat a specific disease. Finally, with a peptide found, step 3 unlocks it from the food source so that it can be used therapeutically.
Advantages of this approach include its highly targeted nature, which could help to tackle a wide range of conditions, its cost-effectiveness due to the platform’s speed and accuracy, and with the compounds coming from natural food sources, the biotech hopes to offer sustainable products.
Nuritas aims to apply the platform to a range of therapeutic areas, including diabetes, anti-aging, dermatology, and animal and plant health. Nora Khaldi, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Nuritas, highlighted the companies ambition: “Our mission is to positively impact billions of lives worldwide.”
The biotech’s plan to use peptides to improve health and treat disease is supported by ongoing research in the biotech industry, where a number of companies are working on peptide-based therapies for a number of areas. Oncopeptides and PeptoMyc both want to treat cancers, targeting peptidase enzymes and the Myc oncogene, respectively. Elsewhere, Ergomed passed Phase II with its candidate to reduce bleeding during surgery, while Cytovation is finishing off the preclinical development of its peptide for warts caused by HPV infection.
The use of AI improves the speed and accuracy of peptide identification, which will help it avoid the development of flawed candidates. In the last week, we have seen this for AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim. This is a waste of time and money in what is already long and expensive journey to the market for biotech and pharma companies.
By getting a big name like Nestlé on its side, Nuritas should now have the backing it needs, in terms money and expertise, to reach the market.
Media – Ana D / shutterstock.com; Nuritas