Project description
Move over vitamins and supplements and make way for extracts of small RNA pieces
We know we should get plenty of fruits and vegetables into our daily diets. We know about vitamins and minerals, and about fiber, and even the value of a colourful plate. However, most of us do not know about the microRNAs (miRNAs) in those fruits and vegetables that are largely responsible for their anti-inflammatory and general disease-preventing properties. The EU-funded project Mirnagreen, coordinated by the company of the same name, has developed proprietary technology to extract miRNAs from food biowaste and deliver a high-quality all-natural product. Targeting the nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals sectors first, Mirnagreen technology will enable creation of a circular economy that valorises outputs all along the food chain.
Objective
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, pose a significant health and economic burden worldwide, accounting for more than 60% of all global deaths. Increasingly, health organizations, governments and citizens themselves are taking a more pro-active stand towards healthier lifestyles. Dietary intake of fruit and vegetables - whose daily consumption recommended by WHO is at least 400g - is a key effective factor in reducing NCDs and chronic inflammation-related mortality risks. The anti-inflammatory capacity of fruits and vegetables is attributable to their microRNAs, which are small non-coding RNA (sRNA). Nevertheless, despite their immunomodulatory action, the poor availability of microRNA in the normal diet make them insufficient to carry out this function.
Mirnagreen is the most extensive and sustainable platform of all-natural, non-modified functional microRNA extracts, based on an exclusive and proprietary food-grade technology to extract and purify microRNA from plants. Mirnagreen technology can extract between 40 to 100 mg small RNAs per kg of fresh plant biomass in a purification cycle of less than 3 hours. The production process enables full valorisation of all residues in the food chain, as it derives from plant waste generated by local food producers. Mirnagreen’s manufacturing is fully sustainable and promotes circular economy.
Mirnagreen is a radically new solution that can be integrated into a wide range of products. Go-to-market applications of our extracts are nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals. Future applications will include agro stimulants, oral care, pet food and, eventually, drugs.
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 Mirnagreen and its market uptake.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusescoronaviruses
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinecardiologycardiovascular diseases
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturevegetable growing
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
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Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
39100 BOLZANO
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.