Senior mobility: Nuritas partners with Maastricht University to fight muscle atrophy

15 May 2019 --- To address the issue of muscle atrophy in senior populations, bioactive peptides player Nuritas has enlisted the expertise of Professor Luc van Loon from Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. The collaboration involves a double-blind placebo trial that will look at short term immobilization to measure muscle mass. This is an area of huge unmet medical need as there are no nutritional interventions that can preserve muscle mass and strength, according to van Loon.

“The opportunity for NPD is vast,” Emmet Browne, CEO of Nuritas, tells NutritionInsight. “The study will allow us to focus on a product portfolio across numerous applications – primarily on muscle mass and helping to prevent its loss with age, while also improving build and maintenance.”

Van Loon is Professor of Physiology of Exercise and Nutrition at the Department of Human Biology at Maastricht University Medical Centre and notes that “with our aging society, addressing muscle loss is of key importance to support healthy aging.” 

The news of the collaboration comes as mobility and an active senior life are seeing increased attention from consumers and the industry as a whole. As life expectancy has increased globally, consumer attention is shifting towards improving the quality of senior life, in terms of mobility and maintaining activity levels. 

To date, collagen supplementation is appealing to a wide audience, as well as people suffering from mobility issues. However, several industry players are responding by developing ingredients to support bone and joint health and increase protein and fiber intake, to usher consumers into a healthier and more active life. 

Dr. Nora Khaldi, Nuritas Founder and Chief Scientific OfficerFounded in 2014, Nuritas is a discovery platform for active peptides that can prevent or treat disease with speed and accuracy. The company seeks to change the landscape of drug discovery by identifying novel peptides using a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform, with in-silico predictions validated by their in-house laboratory and multi-disciplinary team of scientists.

Loss of muscle mass is a crucial concern that Nuritas is focusing on via the new study. Maintaining muscle mass is a complex multifactorial process where the balance between muscle protein synthesis and degradation is essential. In 2018, using an integrative AI approach, Nuritas identified a natural peptide network which can redress imbalances in muscle metabolism. This peptide network has already provided good results and will be entering the clinical trial phase, in collaboration with Professor van Loon, this year.

“The benefit of artificial intelligence and machine learning is that we can turn our discovery platform towards unmet medical needs which can accelerate real solutions that can work for people. The fact that we have gotten to the clinical stage so quickly is a testament to our technology,” Dr. Nora Khaldi, Nuritas Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, tells NutritionInsight.

The company chose Professor van Loon as he is an expert in the space, according to Khaldi. “He is an authority in muscle health and has experience with these very complex trials. It became evident to us in our ongoing discussions with him and his broader team that their input and knowledge would be extremely helpful as we looked to create and implement a trial with the potential to deliver a world’s first in humans.”

Nuritas sees a significant global need for NPD that focus on senior health. “Those over the age of 65 make up a greater percentage of the global population than those under 5 years of age, currently. Add to this the fact that people are living longer and longer beyond 65 and it becomes obvious that we are in the middle of a demographic shift of great proportions. That is what we are looking to aid. A better life for a humanity living longer,” notes Khaldi.

With society living longer, muscle mass, in general, deteriorates bringing a whole list of co-morbidities besides the reduction in mobility and freedom to walk, she says. Less muscle means greater weakness and less mobility, both of which may, for example, increase the risk of falls and fractures. A 2015 report from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research found that people with sarcopenia had 2.3 times the risk of having a low-trauma fracture from a fall, such as a broken hip, collarbone, leg, arm or wrist. 

“The double-blind placebo trial that will look at short term immobilization, where we will cast the leg of individuals and measure the differences in muscle loss and build versus a placebo,” Khaldi continues. “We will also follow the recovery of these individuals after the cast is removed. The outcome of this trial is very important for all types of patients during and after bed rest, which can occur as a result of illness, injury or other disorders.”

The next step for the collaboration is the commencement of the trial itself and the opportunity that it brings. This full trial will last a little over a year. It is a long trial which has been constructed to allow a full opportunity for deep scientific analysis and hopefully exceedingly meaningful, fully validated end results that “will deliver huge hope to an aging population for a better future,” according to Browne. 

By Kristiana Lalou