Nuritas unlocks muscle recovery and blood glucose regulation with AI

05 Feb 2024 --- Nuritas’ chief medical and innovation officer Dr. Andy Franklyn-Miller highlights some of the company’s products targeting muscle recovery and blood glucose regulation. He also outlines how the company utilizes the properties of natural ingredients it discovers through its proprietary AI Magnifier technology.

Nutrition Insight continues its conversation with Franklyn-Miller, going into depth about Nuritas AI-developed PeptiStrong, PeptiYoung and PeptiSleep products.

“PeptiStrong is a 2.4 g dose originating from fava bean,” Franklyn-Miller says. “We have done two clinical trials with PeptiStrong that revealed strength augmentation. We know that it regulates the mTOR pathway of muscle replication.” 

He details that PeptiControl is an ingredient that can be added to food with more carbohydrate or sugar to lessen the impact on the body. “That's one of our goals in Nuritas, is to use our magnifier to create ingredients that have a direct health benefit,” he adds.

.Andy Franklyn-Miller, chief medical and innovation officer at Nuritas.Muscle immobilization and remobilization
To exemplify the application and benefits of PeptiStrong, Franklyn-Miller points to a recent study on the effects of the Vicia faba peptide, found in fava bean by the Magnifier AI, on muscle size during short-term immobilization and subsequent remobilization.

The clinical trial was conducted by researchers at the Maastricht University Medical Centre+ in the Netherlands. The findings are published in The Journal of Nutrition.

“You might think that fava bean is a pretty poor plant source of protein on its own and, others have done some work and research looking at properties of fava bean,” Franklyn-Miller says. “Although it's a protein source, it doesn't have the same properties that we've identified when putting it through a hydrolysis process through which we enzymatically digest and are left with a number of peptides that have specific activities.” 

Outlining how the clinical trial determined that the Vicia faba peptide facilitates muscle recovery, he explains: “We took a group of men and we put their leg in plaster for a week. Then we took the plaster cast off, which simulated muscle sarcopenia, or muscle aging. We allowed them to walk around for two weeks afterwards, no specific training.”

He explains that the effects of PeptiStrong were measured against a milk protein concentrate. “What we found in terms of strength is that the PeptiStrong group recovered strength to 103% of baseline. So it restored the strength that that muscle had, before immobilization, while the milk protein group came around the 63% mark.” 

“One of the most interesting things in that group was that the PeptiStrong group demonstrated a fractional synthesis rate of soy protein four times greater than that of milk protein concentrates,” he continues. “We could see from a recovery perspective, PeptiStrong was replicating muscle or replicating protein, more so than milk protein.”

Clinical trials suggest PeptiStrong regulates the mTOR pathway of muscle replication.Muscle recovery and strength
Examining a second randomized controlled placebo clinical trial looking at the PeptiStrong impact on muscle recovery, Franklyn-Miller details: “We exhausted men through leg extension and then looked at their recovery, two and three days afterwards.”

“What we saw was significant myostatin suppression, and an increase in mitochondrial mass,” he highlights, “but primarily, we saw a return from baseline to 136% of strength.”

“Now, we have literally just finished a clinical trial with the Canadian medical laboratory KGK, looking at men and women’s strength as one of the outcome measures, and lean muscle mass.”

“I am excited about the clinical progression through that, and we will be reporting on that in late February. We've got an ingredient there that has multiple benefits within muscle strength,” he spotlights. 

Blood glucose regulation
Franklyn-Miller also discusses Nuritas’ oral ingredient PeptiControl working to lower blood glucose and present dangerous spikes. 

“Many people now wear blood glucose monitors with continuous glucose monitors on their arm to judge how they respond to food,” he explains, “and you often see a big glucose spike, when insulin is produced by the body, that glucose spike eventually flattens.”

“There are various considerations about foods that do that. So if you eat a bag of jelly beans, that's going to go rocketing up. If you eat some protein, it’s less likely to fly up and do the same. What PeptiControl does is try to flatten that curve.”

“When PeptiControl is blended in as an ingredient, you might choose foods with a higher glycemic index or a food with more carbohydrate or sugar, but lessen the impact on the body,” he states.

By Milana Nikolova