After a decade honing its proprietary processes and building the clinical substantiation for its ingredient portfolio, Hofseth BioCare offers a portfolio of sustainable, upcycled solutions for a range of health end-points, including iron status, weight management, inflammation, bone and joint health and heart health.
Among those solutions is ProGo, upcycled from Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) via a gentle enzymatic process.
Speaking with NutraIngredients at the recent SupplySide West, Dr. Crawford Currie, HBC’s Head of Medical R&D, explained that the company's investigation showed that it was a fraction of the peptides, the smallest peptides in ProGo, that are activating the GLP-1 receptor. The peptides also show pancreatic protection, so where insulin is produced, he said.
“The genesis of this study was literally because in our other clinical studies, we'd seen consistent effects around improved energy and vitality,” he told us. “We'd also seen consistent weight loss effects of around 6% to 7% fat loss, and it was important that it was fat loss. And we also saw underlying this, improved metabolic markers, such as a lowering of fasting blood glucose.”
Additional analysis revealed the activation of GLP-1, which Dr. Currie described as “exciting”. The findings are published in Marine Drugs.
Commenting on the doses, Dr. Currie said the HBC scientists have “gone down as far as 4 g a day and seen these very nice, consistent overall health benefits.
“But now we really feel we can drop that further to aid, convenience, aid formulation, etc,” he added.
Women’s health
Earlier work with ProGo revealed benefits around iron status and ferritin levels, with other studies showing benefits for gut health, all of which are topics that are front of mind in the women's health category.
“It [women’s health] is exactly where we feel it's just a really a natural fit,” Dr. Currie said. “And there could be many aspects here, but one we're probably going to be starting in is menopausal women, where, you know, often there can be issues around reduced energy levels, weight gain, changes in the gut, including the microbiome, but also gut health symptoms and also underlying metabolic changes, including increases in inflammation, increases in fasting or in blood glucose.”
OmeGo
Dr. Currie also discussed the company’s progress with its OmeGo salmon oil, which the company has long stated is more than just an omega-3-rich fish oil.
“As the fish carcass is digested with the protein enzymes, literally the oil is just liberated from the from the meat, etc, and then that just comes to the surface of our tanks,” he explained. “It's just taken off and bottled under nitrogen, and because we're not processing it, and how we do this is at low temperatures, the oil is incredibly stable. It's got a natural four-year shelf life, just bottled under nitrogen.”
Recent research has focused on lung health and respiratory function, and a just-completed study with 120 people explored the potential effects of OmeGo around pollution, sleep and respiratory health.
“We're looking specifically at sleep metrics, cough metrics and those are both self-scored metrics but also wearable device capture, so we have the subjective and the objective measures,” he said.
Source: Marine Drugs
2024, 22(11), 490; doi: 10.3390/md22110490
“Initial Exploration of the In Vitro Activation of GLP-1 and GIP Receptors and Pancreatic Islet Cell Protection by Salmon-Derived Bioactive Peptides”
Authors: C. Currie et al.
