EU grants cardiovascular research €3m; vitamin K player involved
The International Research Network, coordinated by Queen Mary University of London, won the grant with NattoPharma noting part of the €2.9m ‘Horizon’ grant will finance two full-time researchers working on NattoPharma’s MenaQ7 proprietary vitamin K format the Uni of Maastricht.
Other participants are the University College Dublin, Ludvig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen in Germany and Karolinske Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
The project is called ‘EVOLuTION (European Vascular Interventions and Therapeutic Innovation Network), and seeks to train entrepreneurial scientists in the cardiovascular field.
“The Horizon 2020 research grant is one of the most prestigious grants in Europe. The successful grant assignment and the opportunity to allocate highly qualified researchers to further work on vitamin K research is a great recognition of the MenaQ7 platform by this collaboration so far,” said associate professor Leon Schurgers, from Maastricht University.
“I have great expectations for potential new and exciting observations that will arise from our mutual efforts – identifying even more positive health benefits of MenaQ7.”
Vitamin K is also linked to bone health in nutrition scientific literature.
Forms
There are two main forms of vitamin K: phylloquinone, also known as phytonadione, (vitamin K1) which is found in green leafy vegetables such as lettuce, broccoli and spinach, and makes up about 90% of the vitamin K in a typical Western diet; and menaquinones (vitamins K2), which make up about 10% of Western vitamin K consumption and can be synthesized in the gut by microflora.
Menaquinones (MK-n: with the n determined by the number of prenyl side chains) can also be found in the diet; MK-4 can be found in animal meat, MK-7, MK-8, and MK-9 are found in fermented food products like cheese, and natto is a rich source of MK-7.
