Human milk and its special components convey a beneficial health effect to newborn infants, amongst others promoting a healthy intestinal flora and by protecting against infections. Oligosaccharides in the milk may have an important function in this respect, but it is not known in any detail whether single oligosaccharides or glycoproteins, families of oligosaccharides or even more complex mixtures convey the beneficial effects. One of the aims project is to obtain information on this subject.
In the project the following activities are integrated:
-Isolation to obtain large quantities of raw material .
-Structural identification of oligosaccharides from human, cows, sheep and goat milk in order to increase the knowledge about the diversity of oligosaccharides found in milk from these mammalian sources.
-Identification of the principal components responsible for mediating the proposed beneficial effects accompanied by biological tests.
-Development of synthesis strategies for these oligosaccharides from readily available (agricultural) starting materials and/or from milk isolates.
-Finding of structure-function relationships for the isolated oligosaccharides.
The project should lead to special components which should be integrated into foodstuffs that are beneficial for people with an impaired health (therapeutic) or immature immune system (preventive) and for infants that are deprived of the benefits of breast feeding. A major goal of the project is to increase the value of a readily available product from agricultural sources, which will be the main starting material for the high value, added components.