Interest in the human gut microbiome and the influence it exerts on a person’s wellbeing, from cognitive health to immunity, has been rapidly increasing in recent years.
In this episode of HBW Insight's Over the Counter podcast, we speak to Dublin-based food company Kerry Group about a particularly exciting, emerging area of microbiome-based wellness, postbiotics, which are defined by the International Scientific Association of Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) as a “preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host.”
Given that postbiotics rely on inanimate ingredients, rather than live cultures as in yoghurts, they may provide more suitable vehicles for consumer health innovation, suggests Kerry Group’s RDA senior manager of immune and joint health, Sonja Nodland.
Nodland also explains what kinds of postbiotics are currently on the European market, for example for digestive and skin health and immunity, and the regulatory challenges that postbiotics share with other microbiome products in the region, such as pre- and pro-biotics.
Timestamps
2:20 Introductions
4:00 What are postbiotics?
8:30 Advantages of postbiotics for consumer health innovation
10:20 Health benefits of postbiotics
12:00 Types of postbiotics
15:20 Kerry’s postbiotic portfolio
19:00 Postbiotic regulation in the European Union
28:00 Where to start with postbiotic innovation
Guest Bio
Sonja Nodland, PhD is Senior RDA Manager for Immune and Joint Health at Kerry. She conducted her graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota studying both molecular mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis and cancer and human immunology. After finishing her postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota in basic human developmental immunology she joined a pharmaceutical startup company to combine her scientific interests in immunology and the health effects of microbial products on the human immune system. Her current scientific interests are related to the relationship of microbiome health to human immune health and the pleiotropic effects of microbial-derived products on human general health.
