Life Sciences Lab

What we study

• New products arise from start with scientific insights and insights based on consumers/patients/healthcare professional needs. We use this knowledge to create nutritional concepts. The Life Sciences lab is the place where new ideas are translated into testable hypotheses, and first experimental evidence is generated.
• Data we obtain in the Life Sciences lab is also used to support our patent applications to protect our products.
• The cell biology labs allow us to isolate and culture immune cells and then test the impact of nutritional compounds, such as scGOS/lcFOS, on immune cells
• In the Life Sciences lab we study the effects of food ingredients on cells and tissues in the areas brain, immunology and muscle.
• Within brain we use specific cells (PC12) that mimic nerve cells to study for example effects of nutrients on their outgrowth and the formation of new connections, e.g. relevant for studies in Alzheimer’s disease). Or we use other cells (vascular epithelial cells) to study effect of nutrients on blood circulation to the brain, relevant for elderly (physical frailty) and for diseases such as stroke.
  • Within immunology, allergy (for instance cow’s milk allergy) is a large research topic we work on. From in vitro work to analyzing samples from clinical studies, we perform translational research in this lab to study the effects of nutrition on the immune system.
  • Within muscle research, we are very interested in the effect of nutrients on muscle protein synthesis. As you may know, many patients lose a lot of muscle mass when they are lying in a hospital bed for a long time, relevant for our studies in elderly and in the field of oncology. It is important to regain muscle mass to speed recovery and to prevent falls.
• For the analyses that are done here we can study different samples, ranging from our in vitro cells to blood, CSF, or tissue samples from preclinical and clinical studies. With specific assays, we measure for instance nutrient levels or metabolic products.
• Translational science: from cell level to organ level to human as a whole. To make that last step in the translation, we conduct clinical studies with partners such as academic hospitals.

What you see

3 cell culture rooms

• The Life Sciences lab has 3 cell culture rooms and different machines to analyse cells and tissues.
• The 3 cell cabinets, split to work with:
  • Bacteria and/or substances like chemotherapeutics that are kept behind a specific barrier to work safely;
  • More general cell cultures to study effects of nutrients to e.g. improve connectivity of nerve cells or improve protein synthesis in muscle cells; Co-culture of epithelial cells (intestine, lung, skin) and immune cells to study their interaction
  • Primary cells with human background, cells/tissues from clinical studies that can serve as a disease-specific cell model. For instance, cells that produce the Alzheimer-protein Abeta.
    Using specific cells we can mimic an allergic reaction in a test tube and it is used to test the safety of our hydrolysates for cow’s milk allergic infants.
• A sterile airflow allows working with cells to be cultured. Incubators are present to let them grow (37 degr C), but also liquid nitrogen storage facility to freeze cells. 
  

Phadia and flowcytometer (FCM)

Phadia (on first desk at the front) and FCM (on second desk behind Phadia)

Phadia

• The Phadia is often used to analyse samples from our clinical trials specifically related to allergy. A primary outcome in many of these studies is the reduction of allergy. This can be done by determining the antibodies present in the blood sample.
• With this Phadia we can make the differentiation between different types of antibodies, for example you can discriminate between IgE and IgG or between cow’s milk specific IgE and house dust mite or pollen specific IgE (source of allergic response).

 FCM

• The FCM is used in many of our clinical trials related to immune responses. The FCM allows us to:
• differentiate immune cell types or bacteria. To group or sub group cells it is important to get e.g. an understanding of the response of a healthy versus an allergic child.
• The powerful combination of quantitative image analysis and flow cytometry in a single platform creates exceptional new experimental capabilities. It allows to investigate cell-cell signaling and interaction (how cells communicate), visualize uptake in cells, morphology of cells (what they look like), cell cycle and cell death and many more.
• With this technique we have discovered that our GOS/FOS mixture induces regulatory Tcells which are very important cells for the right immune response (better protection to infection and less allergies).