AI and chardonnay marc: Sonomaceuticals’ recipe for sustainable health solutions

16 Apr 2024 --- Scott Forsberg, COO of California, US-based biotechnology company Sonomaceuticals, highlights the positive health benefits associated with WellVine chardonnay marc and how the company’s recent partnership with science innovation company PIPA is facilitating AI research into the product.

In conversation with Nutrition Insight, he also spotlights the environmental sustainability aspects of its WellVine offering.

“WellVine has a unique ability to modulate gut health both directly and indirectly — meaning that it directly affects cell signaling and influences the cells that line the gut while also improving the commensal microbial community by stimulating beneficial species and helping to suppress undesirable species,” states Forsberg.

“The interplay between the more than 40 oligosaccharides in WellVine and its highly diverse polyphenol composition is key to this.”

Last week, Sonomaceuticals announced they are partnering with PIPA with the aim of speeding up the commercialization of WellVine through the utilization of PIPA’s AI platform LEAP to identify compounds and investigate their impact on gut health.

Forsberg asserts: “Our ability to produce a great-tasting, zero-waste ingredient with significant health benefits depended in part on AI helping us to identify the addressable health indications that were a natural result of the composition of coastal chardonnay marc.”

“WellVine is also inherently sustainable since it is an upcycled ingredient.”

Health benefits
Forsberg spotlights how the benefits associated with WellVine chardonnay marc were identified through AI-driven insights. “WellVine has many health benefits largely stemming from its effects on the microbiome and its support of a healthy metabolism. We have granted patents with claims for improving liver health, metabolic syndrome, blood lipids and blood sugar control.” 

“Like all foods, WellVine is a complex mixture of macro and micro nutrition. In the case of chardonnay, we have an extraordinary diversity of both oligosaccharides and polyphenols. Identifying how those nutrients interact and which possible therapeutic areas held the most promise was a huge task.”

Studies show WellVine, commercially used in Vine to Bar chocolates, can  modulate gut health directly and indirectly.He argues that AI has allowed the company to concentrate its efforts on areas of research with the greatest impact on human health and which the product is best suited to address. 

“It also helped us confirm the superiority of chardonnay grown in coastal and mountain areas and create manufacturing systems that would optimize these characteristics.”

PIPA’s AI platform 
The COO further explains how the use of AI has expedited the process of identifying synergistic combinations for commercial applications. “AI does something similar to what an expert might do in this area but much faster and with a broader reach.”

“First, it helps to identify compounds and phytochemicals of interest and then correlate those with known biomarkers and clinical models. At the same time, it is looking for complementary information with other ingredients that will amplify those effects or provide necessary components that can fill gaps in the therapeutic profile.”

He states that while this is something that human specialists can do, it would take them much longer, and their scope of information will be constrained by personal experience and the built-in assumptions that bias human thinking.

Sustainability opportunities
Forsberg explores why and how WellVine chardonnay marc aims to address sustainability concerns within the food industry. 

“Making an impact with sustainable foods requires two things: first, the manufacturing and sourcing needs to use best practices for sustainability; and second, the product has to deliver a great consumer experience,” he comments.

“We are all familiar with the many failed products that were good for you and/or good for the planet but which weren’t good to eat. We discovered early in our application development that WellVine has the ability to make other foods taste better, especially foods that are high in bioactives like phenolics that can be bitter.”

He points out that it does this without adding a lot of sugar since most of the sugar ends up in the juice to make wine. “A lot of potentially healthy upcycled ingredients are difficult to commercialize because they taste bad or don’t provide a great consumer experience.”

Sonomaceuticals sources all of its grapes from the coastal vineyards of Jackson Family Wines in Santa Rosa, California. “However, unlike many other upcycled ingredients, WellVine is also zero-waste, which means that we use 100% of the food biomass from the winepress without creating another waste stream. Grape seed extracts are a good example of an upcycled product that results in another waste stream since the polyphenols are extracted and the remainder is discarded.”

“These insights also allow us to continually ‘tune’ our manufacturing and sourcing to ensure the best possible ingredient profile while preserving the essential integrity of fresh chardonnay grapes and their great taste rather than focusing on a single bioactive. We believe this ‘trifecta’ of health, taste and sustainability is a model for how the food industry can achieve significant gains in sustainability as well as global food security.”

Looking at what’s ahead for the company, Forsberg concludes, “We are continuing to build on our basic understanding of wine grape cultivation, composition and processing. At the same time, we plan to expand our clinical portfolio with various trials and measures of efficacy. We are also looking into additional indications like skin and brain health.”

By Milana Nikolova