Lallemand Wins Poster Award at Probiota
Lallemand Health Solutions (Montreal, Canada) has announced that innovative probiotics research presented by Dr. Pierre Burguière won the Scientific Frontiers poster award during Probiota 2015 event, in Amsterdam early February. The winning poster described an innovative method for the specific quantification of viable probiotic bacteria in a fraction of the time required for traditional culturing methods. The approach shows promise as a complementary method for quality control in the probiotic industry. During a plenary session dedicated to allergy and inflammation, Dr. Chad MacPherson unveiled interesting in vitro data showing potent immune-modulatory activity of individual probiotic strains from the Lallemand collection, shedding new light on recently published clinical trial on individual strains from ProbioKid formula.
“At present, the quality control of probiotics is performed using classical microbiology enumeration: the specificity of these techniques is limited, not all microorganisms are taken into account (so called viable but not culturable bacteria are omitted), and it usually takes several days to get an answer,” said Burguière, who is a researcher at Lallemand Health Solutions. “We have investigated different techniques to overcome these issues, and finally flow cytometry appeared to us as the best option for a strain specific quantification of viable bacteria within a couple of hours. We confronted this approach to traditional culture-based approach and found it effective. These findings provide promising options for the development of complementary methods for probiotics quality control and other industrial applications involving microorganisms and could set new standard for the industry.”
Chad Mac Pherson, PhD, researcher at Lallemand Health Solutions, detailed his immunology research: “One of the objectives of Lallemand’s strain documentation R&D program is to evaluate the interactions of individual strains with the host immune response. Immune pathways are diverse and complex and we have spent several years fine-tuning a specific DNA microarray to this aim. The data presented today indicate that three of our strains, which enter into the formulation of a probiotic preparation shown to modulate immunity in clinic-ProbioKid: Bifidobacterium bifidum Rosell-71, Bifidobacterium infantis Rosell-33 and Lactobacillus helveticus Rosell-52- exert potent and different immune-modulation activities in vitro,” he explained. “First of all, these strains can trigger the specific attenuation of gene expression in inflammatory pathways. Moreover, the complete formula showed a greater impact than the three independent strains, substantiating synergistic benefits. Finally, the observed gene-modulating effect extends beyond immune/virus pathways to include: cell signaling, nervous/endocrine, digestive or metabolic disorder related pathways. Such results should be related to the recently published clinical trial using the same strains, which concluded to a reduction of cold/flu days in stressed subjects, and pave the way for new probiotics applications.”
For more information, visit www.probiotaevent.com or www.lallemand-health-solutions.com.
