CHIRI’s Professor Philip Newsholme.
Congratulations to a team of Curtin University researchers, including Professor Philip Newsholme from the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI), whose research project exploring lupins as a potential treatment for type two diabetes has received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
The team will partner with industry in developing a commercially viable way to turn lupin seed waste into a treatment for high blood glucose.
The project has received more than $310,000 in funding from the ARC’s Linkage Projects scheme. An additional $120,000 pledged by the partner organisation, Lupintel.
The next step of the research collaboration will allow Curtin food scientists, chemical engineers and biomedical scientists to develop new technology to extract high purity gamma-conglutin – a naturally occurring protein derived from lupins that has great potential to control blood glucose levels.
The team is led by Curtin Associate Professor Stuart Johnson, a food technologist in Agriculture and Food in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences. Associate Professor Ranjeet Utikar from the WA School of Mines: Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering and Dr Jonathan Clements from Lupintel join Philip as collaborators in the project.
Philip, who has dedicated years of his research career to easing the disease burden on people with diabetes, is thrilled to see the project supported.
“I’m delighted with the funding for this particular project because it has such great potential for providing a possible new treatment option for diabetes,” Philip said.
The role of Philip and his CHIRI-based research team in the project is to deliver an improved understanding of the mechanisms behind the glucose-modulating action of gamma-conglutin.
“Our work at CHIRI will substantiate the bioactive nature of the protein’s glucose-lowering effects,” Philip said. “It will also provide rigorous data to guide the future development of innovative peptide-based food ingredients and nutraceuticals from lupin, using the most beneficial blood glucose-modulating fractions of the protein.”
We wish Philip and his collaborators every success in this exciting research project, which you can read more about here: https://buff.ly/33HDjFL
