Functional/nutritional characterization of new products obtained from food by-products/wastes

In the last few years, sustainability has been driving and promoting research to exploit and valorize food by-products and waste to support health and well-being. Innovative biotechnologies have been applied to produce new food products with a high nutritional value from by-products and waste, enriched with bioactive compounds displaying antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective, and other important biological activities. The potential bioactivity of nutraceuticals ingested with diet is strongly influenced by their digestive stability, bioaccessibility, bioavailability, and interaction with the intestinal microbiota. In this project, in vitro models will be used to establish the potential nutritional value and functional properties of compounds and new food products obtained from by-products/waste. Furthermore, an in vitro multi-compartment digestion system, coupled with in vitro cell models, will simulate, with high reproducibility, the conditions occurring in the gastrointestinal tracts, miming the digestive process and the microbial composition in the different regions of the human gut to evaluate bioaccessibility and bioavailability of new food products and gut microbiota metabolism.

The activities will include three main subject areas:

• Evaluation of functional properties of bioactive compounds/new food products
  The functional properties of selected bioactive compounds will be evaluated using colon or hepatic cell models. In particular, cell viability, cell death, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and intracellular lipid accumulation will be analysed. In addition, real-time PCR and Western Blotting analysis will be used to evaluate the expression of aquaporins and the epithelial-sodium channel ENaC under the effects of bioactive compounds (UNIBA).
• Evaluation of digestive stability, bioaccessibility and bioavailability of bioactive compounds/new food products.

One selected novel food will be evaluated during the in vitro simulated gastrointestinal digestion. The effect of the intestinal environment (pH, enzyme activities, temperature etc.) on the main bioactive compounds (polyphenols) will be evaluated during the three major stages of mouth, gastric and small intestinal digestion. Thereafter, the digestive stability, bioaccessibility, and in vitro bioavailability evaluation of the main identified compounds will be performed by coupling cellular lines in vitro Caco-2 intestinal cell model. Finally, the microbial population dynamic during colonic digestion will be studied and monitored by metagenomics analysis (CNR).

Bioaccessibily data of the main bioactive compounds present in at least one new functional food; Characterization of microbial population dynamic of simulated dynamic digestion; Information on the polyphenol’s bioavailability; Information on the reciprocal effect between polyphenols and gut microbiota (prebiotics effects, release of new active metabolites).
The expected results will contribute to designing a global and integrated picture of the biological and functional effects of bioactive compounds from agri-food-specific by-products/waste obtained by applying microbial and enzymatic biotechnologies. Specifically, different experimental approaches will be applied to define the physiological features of bioactive compounds in terms of cytoprotection, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. The expression of channels and transporters of nutritional relevance will be assayed as well. The relevance of the expected findings consists of exploiting biotechnological methods to obtain added-value compounds having nutritional and beneficial actions.