Development of a novel circular economy plant protein derivative as a readily digestible dietary ingredient to support healthy ageing

In collaboration with the Biorenewables Development Centre at the University of York, and supported by an Innovate UK Smart Grant, Bell and Loxton Innovations has established a proprietary manufacturing process for the robust preparation of peptide hydrolysates from the meal created during oil extraction from rapeseed. We believe that these hydrolysates will have biological properties that benefit skeletal muscle function, mitigate sarcopenia, and thus promote a healthy lifespan. Specifically, we hypothesise that the leucine-rich peptide hydrolysate blend will increase the muscle’s capacity to burn nutrients and simultaneously will increase energy demand for this capacity.

We aim to provide a mechanistic proof-of-principle for this hypothesis by establishing the effect of the hydrolysate sample on the bioenergetics of primary human skeletal muscle cells through the following 3 objectives.
1. We will measure real-time ATP fluxes in cellular models of age-related loss of muscle mass and function to clarify how sarcopenia perturbs the balance between myocellular nutrient breakdown and energy expenditure.

2. We will digest the rapeseed-meal-derived peptide hydrolysate sample into the smaller peptides that skeletal muscle cells will likely face physiologically, and will measure the effects of these di- and tripeptides on intracellular ATP fluxes to assess how they affect the balance between nutrient breakdown and energy expenditure in both healthy and dysfunctional muscle cells, and thus establish whether or not rapeseed-derived protein is likely to limit the development of sarcopenia.

3. We will measure both the original and digested rapeseed-meal-derived hydrolysate samples, and separate the components of these samples, to determine the active ingredients that are responsible for the observed bioenergetic effects.