AlgaHealth (877422)

  https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/877422

  Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

  AlgaHealth: novel cultivation technologies of unique microalgae strains for high quality of fucoxanthin-based products.

  SME instrument (EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020)

  recycling  ·  phycology  ·  business models  ·  alcohols  ·  sustainable economy

  2019-07-01 Start Date (YY-MM-DD)

  2019-11-30 End Date (YY-MM-DD)

  € 71,429 Total Cost

  Description

Obesity, diabetes and other metabolic syndromes affect an increasing proportion of the population and pose significant economic burden to healthcare systems. To prevent and treat lifestyle-related diseases, it is not sufficient to use an exclusively pharmacological treatment. Nutrition also plays a critical role. Therefore, researchers began to find safe and effective functional ingredients in food to prevent and treat such diseases. One of these functional ingredients is fucoxanthin - a golden-brown carotenoid found in macro and microalgae. The common method to harvest fucoxanthin is from macroalgae (brown seaweeds), but it is not an acceptable alternative because it is seasonal, not sustainable and allows to the extraction of very low quantities of fucoxanthin. The only alternative for a more efficient and sustainable production of fucoxanthin are microalgae. However, existing production techniques of microalgae require high investment and large energy input, preventing large scale and sustainable production. At AlgaHealth we isolated, developed and cultivated new and proprietary microalgae strains of Isochrysis species and novel agro-physiological manipulations to make them grow faster and produce more fucoxanthin. These novel technologies constitute a proven and efficient platform for industrial scale production of high quality fucoxanthin-based oleoresin, at lower energy and environmental-friendly production costs. AlgaHealth is an Israeli biotech company founded in 2017 and stemming from its co-founders’ 20-year experience in microalgae and carotenoids industries. The proposed work in Phase 1 of the SME instrument fits into our overall plan to reach the market by contributing the financial resources needed to plan a fast sound wider deployment of AlgaHealth products and their market uptake.

  Complicit Organisations

1 Israeli organisation participates in AlgaHealth.