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Stress BioSciences Inc. PBIO (PBI) has been a frontrunner within the pressure-based expertise market for a few years, primarily servicing medical and life science firms, educational laboratories, and authorities organizations. Now the corporate desires to interrupt into the Excessive-Stress Processing (HPP) meals area with a system that they consider presents important benefits over techniques at present getting used within the $14 billion HPP market. Named the Extremely Shear Know-how (UST) platform, UST techniques mix ultra-high strain with intense shearing to supply long-term secure, extremely water soluble, and exquisitely bioavailable nanoemulsions of oils in water. This revolutionary processing system is at present in its final stage of improvement, and is anticipated to be commercially launched by PBI later this yr.
The high-pressure processing (HPP) meals market is a $14 billion market that encompasses the expertise used to sanitize, pasteurize or in any other case enhance the security and high quality of meals and drinks.
How Does Conventional Excessive-Stress Processing Work?
HPP includes utilizing extremely excessive strain to cut back the extent of microorganisms in liquid meals and drinks; such pathogens may very well be dangerous – even lethal – to folks if ingested. By making use of uniform strain to the complete merchandise, HPP pasteurization techniques supplied by trade gamers like JBT Avure Applied sciences JBT, Thyssenkrupp ADR TKAMY, and Hyperbaric are in a position to destroy food-borne pathogens and inactivate deleterious enzymes with out harming the meals itself.
Earlier than HPP got here on the scene, sanitizing meals required both excessive warmth or robust chemical preservatives. Each of those labored when it comes to killing off dangerous pathogens, however they’d additionally adversely impression the flavour, texture, shade, and nutritive worth of the meals. Even much less fascinating, they may additionally find yourself destroying sure vitamins — particularly Vitamin C and different antioxidants that break down in warmth, lowering the dietary worth of the meals.
HPP, then again, doesn’t change the feel or taste of the meals itself as a lot as warmth or chemical compounds do. Plus, utilizing strain as a substitute of warmth additionally helps protect the nutrient profile because it doesn’t break down nutritional vitamins, antioxidants, or different micronutrients in the way in which that prime warmth does.
UST additionally permits producers to attain longer shelf life with out counting on chemical preservatives — and in a market the place shoppers are more and more in search of “clear label” meals and are typically extra cautious of any sort of components, HPP makes it doable to enchantment to evolving client calls for.
Regardless of its advantages, current HPP strategies can’t overcome a key downside that liquid meals and beverage producers face: stopping emulsions from separating. With many meals, particularly those who mix oil with water, the liquids don’t wish to keep combined because the product sits on the shelf, so the oil tends to separate and rise to the highest.
Some producers cope with this by utilizing hydrogenated fat to create meals that gained’t separate, however these processed fat are related to a doable increased risk of coronary heart assaults, diabetes, and stroke. When producers skip the hydrogenated fat and simply let separation occur, the specified well being advantages of the meals is commonly considerably diminished, because the human physique struggles to soak up oil-based vitamins.
How Does Stress BioSciences’ UST Platform Overcome the HPP Shortcomings?
The UST Platform is a pressure-based system that may lastly remedy the issue of separation in emulsions, with out utilizing chemical processing like hydrogenation.
The place current HPP expertise depends on strain alone, the UST platform combines ultra-high strain ranges with a patented NanoGap valve that controls move charges in a novel means for higher dispersion. Including this NanoGap valve-related shear expertise (or the flexibility to bodily break aside and disperse the oil drops) is a game-changer.
The distinctive design of the NanoGap valve makes it doable to supply nanoemulsions the place oil drops are damaged down into tiny oil droplets which are so small they’ll’t simply recombine, which makes the ensuing nanoemulsion extra shelf-stable, which means producers can ship merchandise worldwide with out worrying about separation or high quality degradation. Along with being considerably extra secure, the ensuing nanoemulsions provide the extra benefit that the energetic oil-based ingredient is more likely to be extra bioavailable, which means the physique absorbs extra of the oil-based energetic ingredient.
Not solely may the UST course of make it doable to get rid of hydrogenated fat from retailer cabinets, however it might additionally make beforehand difficult-to-absorb dietary supplements like CBD oil or the highly effective antioxidant Astaxanthin simpler to infuse into drinks and liquid meals. Importantly, the UST platform may scale to very giant manufacturing ranges.
Basically, UST-derived nanoemulsions not solely shield towards nutrient loss by considerably lowering publicity to warmth, however they’ll additionally enhance the bioavailability of these oil-based vitamins whereas lowering producers’ dependence on chemical components and chemical processing that always enhance the price of manufacturing whereas leading to adversarial well being results.
To make the UST platform extra broadly obtainable within the meals and beverage area, PBI partnered with The Ohio State College (OSU) to develop a commercial-scale mannequin of the UST expertise. Now on show on the world-renowned Superior Meals Know-how Pilot Plant at Ohio State, the mannequin system will quickly be obtainable to supply reside demonstrations of the nanoemulsification course of for trade firms from all over the world.
This put up incorporates sponsored promoting content material. This content material is for informational functions solely and isn’t supposed to be investing recommendation.