Euromed: Clinical evidence is crucial to sustain innovative claims
25 Jun 2024 | Euromed
Andrea Zangara, the head of scientific communication and medical affairs at Euromed, highlights how cutting-edge science, tradition and commitment to sustainability drive innovation at the company. He details new clinical research on Euromed’s cucumber and spinach extracts, which both support healthy aging — improving joint and muscle health. In the future, Euromed will expand its Mediterranean portfolio, prioritizing weight management, sleep and cognitive function.
This is Yolanda van Gaal, senior journalist at Nutrition Insights.
I am here with Andrea Zangara, who is the head of scientific communication and Medical Affairs at Yomet.
Thank you for joining us today, and let me dive right in and ask you what is driving innovation at YOO right now?
Hi, Yolanda.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity for this interview.
And, yeah, it's a very good question.
Innovation, it's, is crucial, nowadays, it's very important in a very competitive market and with customers that are, more inquisitive on, on what is, proposed to them.
So, , innovation at Euromed is driven by a combination of cutting edge, science, tradition, and commitment to sustainability.
For example, we have different, extraction technologies that are eco-friendly, so we try to minimize our environmental impact.
We are leveraging digital, transformation, so, artificial intelligence, in silica studies, and this, we are noticing that, is enhancing the, predictability and efficacy of our extract.
So we can go to clinical studies, quicker and without the need for, a lot of pre-clinical, pre-clinical studies.
So it makes, , the clinical.
Process more straightforward and, and more efficient.
Awesome, and I understand also that you have some new ingredients.
I'd love to talk about those as , but first I wanted to ask what key areas Euromed is focusing on within topics like healthy aging, which I think is a big trend at the moment.
What can you tell us about that?
Sure, where For, for our newest products which are the Mediterranean fruits and vegetable extracts, which are inspired by the Mediterranean diet, and of course, the Mediterranean diet is intended as a, a, an, a crucial tool.
For non-pharmacological tools for, for healthy aging, but also for prevention.
So, by consequence, our, our portfolio of Mediterranean extracts does reflect this concern for healthy aging.
And we are quite keen to areas such as joint health, muscle strength, cognitive health, mood and, and sleep, cardiovascular health, and, and also skin health because skin aging is, is an important concern of, of many customers.
So that's, that's certainly, another area.
And then metabolic health.
Because, metabolism is, we know that, is, is impacted by aging, by a number of dietary and, and external issues that, sometimes we are not too bothered, unfortunately, to control.
So with our extract, we, we try to approach all these key, , aging, -aging areas.
Interesting, and you already mentioned the importance of clinical studies and, you know, some of the progress you're making on that.
Can you highlight a bit or explain what research has been done on the health benefits of your offerings and what the main findings were?
Yes, we, we have several studies on, for example, palmanox, our pomegranate extract efficacy in middle-aged subjects for cardiovascular functions, but the newest studies on the cucumber extract, cubera, and the spinach extract, , SIA are targeting, again, people that are over 40.
And a clinical study on HuberRA has been, has been conducted.
It was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled studies, involving subjects, subjects over 40 years experiencing knee pain due to osteoarthritis.
So the results were very positive and showed a significant improvement in pain reduction and physical function, so also muscle functions were improved.
Moreover, the effect was visible, not significant, but visible from week 1 of use and then started to become significant versus placebo around week 4.
So a quite, fast onset of efficacy, compared to, to other, other extracts.
And the, the The dosage is 30 mg of this cucumber extract, so extremely, extremely powerful, even though we don't do any, modification in terms of bioavailability.
It's, besides being extracted with our pure hydro process, it's basically all, vegetable goodness, into a powder.
The spinach extract also has been, researched in a, double-blind placebo-controlled studies in adults over 50 years old in combination with, sport, with exercise, and this, combination in a 12-week study.
Showed a significant improvement of muscle function.
Muscle, , mass was also reasonably improved, and, , muscle quality as was, was improved.
So, yes, we, we, we believe the clinical evidence, it's, it's important to sustain innovative claims specifically for when you target specific populations.
So you need, evidence in that population.
Awesome.
And I'm also really curious always, what companies can tell us about future plans for product development or expansion into the markets?
What can you tell us about, what to expect in the coming years from Euromed?
Yes, we, we are expanding our Mediterranean extract portfolio.
And we are targeting in terms of priorities, we are targeting weight management.
Sleep And cognitive functions.
So particularly the weight management products which at the moment we cannot reveal, what it is, but it will be soon revealed is a fruit extract and has been researched, in a clinical study just completed and showing indeed a reduction of Of, body weight, particularly the fat mass, which is, the most important part.
The mechanism of action, is, most likely, an inhibition of the, lipase, so there is a less absorption of, of basically fat from, from the diet.
And, and yeah, so for other areas, we are keen to research first with the bioinformatics and with models that are predictive and making less use of, of animal, research.
Awesome.
And I would love to hear a little bit more on how Euromed does clinical research.
You already mentioned the, the bioinformatics.
Can you maybe expand a little bit on that or give some examples of how you do the research?
Research is part of every facet at Euromed, so we employ a researcher in the development of products, so various extraction technologies, innovative, approaches, membrane filtration, tangential filtration, enzymes, and, and, and so on.
And then, the approach is to scientifically analyze the literature, the ethno, botanic significance of products, in, , in, in, in, in humans, and then move to a more structured, research approach, involving culminating with, with clinical studies and, of course, with botanical.
Clinical studies, , all research is complex because botanicals contains an array of, of compounds, so these compounds can really either work synergistically or, not, and, therefore, it's a challenging area that requires careful planning.
And, and, and careful execution as and always with some incognita as , of course.
So speaking of scientific research and sustainability, which you mentioned are important areas for Euromed, can you highlight some of the company's achievements in these areas?
Sure, the achievements are the most, the most prized achievement is our customer satisfaction, but of course, other, other, other type of acknowledgement, such as, winning prizes or, or scoring, with a specific, provider, for example, talking about sustainability, with, we, we recently been awarded the , the, the platinum medal with, , with Ecobodies and, which, which, acknowledges our commitment to sustainability in many areas and, we've been, we've been working harder to move from the, silver and gold and then finally, we reached the platinum standard, which is, a quite, a quite important, achievement.
Which really reflects our commitment to sustainability in all areas.
So in terms of, , of research, We had important recognition, recently.
One was related to the publication of a pharmacokinetic study on lemon, our lemon fruit extract, that won the, award as the best published paper in the, scientific journal Antioxidant, where, where the study was published.
So, this is certainly, a great recognition for the researchers that, that, that run the studies, but also for you, Red, as, it is our, our product.
And then most importantly, recently we won the, Tyler Barrow Award granted by the American Botanical Council.
And this award really is mm is testifying our commitment to research, commitment to research that really started in the 70s where when we, we initiated the research on milk thistle, Euromed is the the company that basically launched the first standardized milk thistle extract and there've been at least 50 clinical studies on our milk thistle extract.
And on following and maintaining this important leadership, we've been, continuing this research, these clinical studies, and this has been recognized by the American Botanical Council awarding us the Tyler Barrow Award.
That is a, a specific award for the industry that is, , investing in, in, in evidence-based, solutions for, for improving people's lives.
