NUtech Ventures 2020 Breakthrough Innovation of the Year

NUtech Ventures Author

10/29/2020 Added

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The Breakthrough Innovation of the Year award went to Bob Hutkins, professor of food science and technology. The award recognizes a technology developed in the past year that will likely have a profound impact on industry, business or a field of study. Hutkins is a renowned scientist in probiotics and prebiotics, and has developed several probiotic strains that show a positive effect on the human microbiome. He is a co-founder of faculty startup company Synbiotic Health, which is working to commercialize synbiotics — combinations of probiotics and prebiotics — for food, beverage and nutraceutical products.

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[00:00:00.080](upbeat music)
[00:00:02.870]My name is Bob Hutkins.
[00:00:04.910]I'm a Professor of Food Microbiology
[00:00:07.200]in the department of Food Science and Technology.
[00:00:09.340]And more so one of the members
[00:00:10.770]of the Nebraska Food for Health Center.
[00:00:13.850]The platform that we have developed
[00:00:16.430]allows us to study the gut microbiota
[00:00:20.450]both in humans, but we could also scale this down
[00:00:24.480]and study the activities of that gut microbiota
[00:00:29.180]in the laboratory.
[00:00:30.690]So we could set up little,
[00:00:32.570]what we call gut fermenters in the laboratory.
[00:00:35.460]And they mimic, fairly well
[00:00:38.840]what happens in the human gastrointestinal tract.
[00:00:41.960]The challenge is,
[00:00:43.910]and it's a considerable challenge
[00:00:45.820]is that the gut microbiome is complex.
[00:00:50.610]It's unique to every individual
[00:00:53.280]and it's remarkably stable.
[00:00:55.930]So that means that it's difficult
[00:00:59.120]to cause those kinds of changes
[00:01:01.060]that we wanna to bring about.
[00:01:02.910]Now, what this allows us to do
[00:01:04.700]in a very high throughput way
[00:01:07.180]is to perturb those little gut fermenters,
[00:01:11.400]and then we could determine what changes have occurred.
[00:01:14.830]This is one of the breakthroughs that we've had
[00:01:17.110]is that we can now fish out
[00:01:19.200]those strains that have responded
[00:01:21.820]to whatever input
[00:01:24.210]we've imposed in that little gut microbiota fermenter.
[00:01:27.780]In my group we can design experiments,
[00:01:31.490]we can perform experiments,
[00:01:33.600]we can collect the data,
[00:01:35.170]we can analyze the data.
[00:01:37.100]And we're good at publishing our results
[00:01:40.210]in high impact journals.
[00:01:43.800]Where we are less skilled
[00:01:46.130]is in being able to translate and convey that information
[00:01:51.970]to the stakeholders, to consumers, to the industry.
[00:01:57.110]We formed a company called Symbiotic Health
[00:02:00.300]a number of years ago.
[00:02:01.640]It really kind of sat idle for a long time
[00:02:03.960]because faculty are busy, we all have our day jobs.
[00:02:08.020]But we had in the back of our mind
[00:02:09.290]that we'd have to devote some time to this
[00:02:11.360]because we knew that the strains, the technology,
[00:02:15.020]the intellectual property that we had
[00:02:18.807]could be commercialized.
[00:02:19.750]And then we could reach more people.
[00:02:21.570]And that's where Nutech has stepped in.
[00:02:24.840]So Jeewan and Cheryl
[00:02:27.630]and Brad and the Nutech staff,
[00:02:29.440]that's what they are skilled at.
[00:02:30.800]And so we've relied on them
[00:02:33.737]to take our knowledge and convey that.
[00:02:36.830]Whether it's in patents or in licensees
[00:02:39.920]or other kinds of formats.
[00:02:42.860]That can get what we think is very important information
[00:02:46.930]out to the public, to Nebraskans and even to the world.
[00:02:51.836]To improve human health.
[00:02:53.407](upbeat music)

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NUtech Ventures 2020 Breakthrough Innovation of the Year

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