Business
SweetBiotix® development: human taste studies
SweetBiotix® development: human taste studies.
About this update from Optibiotix Health Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \nRNS Number : 5937C OptiBiotix Health PLC 23 January 2018 \n\n \nOptiBiotix Health plc\n(\"OptiBiotix\" or the \"Company\")\n \nSweetBiotix® development: Results of further human taste studies\n \nOptiBiotix Health plc (AIM: OPTI), a life sciences business developing compounds to tackle obesity, high\ncholesterol and diabetes, announces successful human taste studies in its SweetBiotix® product development programmes. The Company has a number of development programmes designed to:-\n \n1. Develop natural high intensity sweeteners (HIS) with improved flavour profile and microbiome modulating functionality. OptiBiotix announced on July 11th 2017 that it had succeeded in developing customised oligosaccharides demonstrating good flavour profile and sweetness of between 140X and 223X that of sucrose at equivalent concentrations. \n2. Develop sweet natural healthy fibres which are not digested in the human gut, and hence calorie free. These sweet fibres have been developed as potential bulk sugar replacements as a product which has sweetness similar to sucrose but contain no calories, and improve microbiome diversity.\n \nThis announcement reports on human taste studies carried out on OptiBiotix's sweet healthy natural fibres compared to existing sugars and prebiotics. The studies were performed by The Flavour and Sensory Science Centre at the University of Reading and tested eight samples (including OptiBiotix's test sample) using an expert panel of 11 experienced panellists who rated 11 attributes compared to sucrose. The tests showed:-\n \n· Of the 11 attributes rated, eight were significantly different between samples. The most substantial differences were in sweet taste, strength of off-flavour and sweet after taste.\n· The sweet oligosaccharide developed by OptiBiotix was significantly sweeter than all other samples and low in all off-flavours (e.g. bitterness, sourness, staleness, saltiness etc).\n \nThe results of this independent study provide proof of product concept for natural, low calorie, sweet healthy fibres with gut microbiome functionality as potential bulk sugar replacement in a wide r...