Precise Nutrition, the Future of Health Care Industry?

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Written by: Jing Ma, Mengyue Zhang

Edited by: Wilbur ZHU (WeChat ID: aotokuer),Anna HU

Would the effect be the same even they are eaten by different people? No! As an old saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Dietary recommended intakes and safety scope made by state is based on certain groups of people rather than individuals. Thus, it is meaningful and profound to pay more attention to precise nutrition.

Precise nutrition, the customized nutrition, means making some safe and effective individualized nutrition management for keeping body healthy, preventing and controlling diseases effectively. In the future, precise nutrition would be an important development direction of nutritional science and disease prevention science.

At the Product Innovation B Session of FBIF2017, Dr. Xuguang Zhang, Director of Science and Technology Centre in By-Health Co.Ltd China (a leading brand and iconic company in dietary supplements industry) , gave an in-depth interpretation of the precise nutrition.

By-Health’s Precise Nutrition Plan

Analyzing and intervening diet and lifestyle contributes to a healthier body. How to prevent and control chronic disease? Precise nutrition is the best choice. Because ” precise nutrition” not only can prevent and control many kinds of critical illness, such as diabetes, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and tumor, but also can kill some cancer cells. And many experts agree that precise nutrition indeed has a therapeutic effect, as it can prevent or slow the growth and transfer of tumor cells and accelerate their death. What’s more, fitness which is hot today needs to cooperate with precise nutrition closely, too. As the saying goes, 30% of agood shape of body is related to exercise and 70% remained depends onfoods. Precise nutrition can help you get more with less.

In this aspect, By-Health is actively developing similar personalized health recipes which would give some customized suggestions, such as health management programs or precise dietary advice on health care products, based on the existing database and the needs of different people. Some big brands have been investing this sector. Last April, Nestle announcedthat they were investing the R&D of ” food fighting against diseases” , and they also estimated that the market of this sector among the old can reach at 15 billion dollars.

New physical examination technology helps precise nutrition management become a reality. Both the result of traditional physical examination and hospital examination index can be used to illustrate one person’s pre-nutritional status and evaluate the intervention effect. The newtechnologies in this field are personalized detection methods and instruments which are cheap and rapid. For example, the rapid detection of a drop of blood which is very necessary, because personalized health management (precise nutrition management) relies on repeated detection; and disease screening technology is becoming a hot and mature technology platform which guides the precise nutrition intervention.

Utilizing genomics to decode ” life password” drives the development of precise nutrition. Gene sequencing can lock one person’s disease genes so that we can prevent and cure disease in advance. The precise nutrition with gene sequencing can ensure three right things: right individuals, right amount of intervention and right nutrients. By-Health has invested and gets shares of Find Bio-Tech, and they would integrate resources and continue to invest new tech (gene sequencing) which represents the direction of this industry in the future, devoting themselves to improve mass’s life quality through more scientific diagnostic data. In addition, By-Health has been actively involved in the basic research of genomics, and last year, as the only Asian participated in the annual meeting of the European NutritionalGenomics Organization (NuGO).

Other related enterprises also closely carry on genomics researches.Zixin Pharmaceutical Industrial CO. Ltd.and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly developed BIGIS second generation gene sequencers which can be produced in quantity now. Gloria Gene invested byHarbin Gloria Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. is specialized in gene detection services and the operations of big data of gene and it also provides accurate and rapid detection methods.Shenzhen Kangmei Biotechnology CO. Ltd.has planned to research and develop immunodiagnosis and gene diagnosis products.

One of the difficulties lies in that how to closely contact the three dimensions of precise nutrition.This requires some systematic algorithms, and even in the application field, AI technology would be applied. The influence of each dimension is still in the phase of academic exploration and research, and it is more complex in the practical application. Each individual has different taste preferences and even is allergic with some nutrients, and different age groups of people have different requirements for nutrients.

Dr. Zhang mentioned that precise nutrition means that at right time give right person precise intervention, and this is the basic rule.

Make a Further Step in R&D of Products, Focusing on Personalization and Functions of Food

The R&D of precise nutrition is the key to catch up with the front of the technology.Dr. Zhang mentioned that By-Health has two R&D directions, one is personalization which means developing in depth and breadth, in detail, besides products, service would also be provided; the other is a further study in foods’ functions, which means making an in-depth research in existing foods’ functions. By-Health holds the core value that raw materials build great brand and, By-Health chase optimization, selecting the quality raw materials from the whole world, and it has established five raw materials sites overseas.

In the future, comprehensive health sector of By-Health would cooperate with material suppliers, scientific research institutions, health management companies, medical company and medical insurance in order to construct a comprehensive health industry and an integrated R&D ecosphere.

Dr. Zhang also expressed that in the practice of precise nutrition, in the process of business applications, including business development, the most difficult is to keep a balance between concept and technology, because any excessive bias would be bad for the business application of precise nutrition.

There are many successful examples, such asHabitwhich is specialized in the express delivery services of personal nutrition meals, the digital health platform developed byNestle and SamsungandPepsi Gatorade‘s Gx the Sports Fuel Customization Platform aiming at customizing energy supplements intelligently based on athletes’ immediate physiological state.

By-Health’s Research Ideas of Precise Nutrition: International Scientific Research, Collaborative Innovation

By-Health’s innovations on precise nutrition are reflected in its strategy and resources.Strategically, there is a change that the suppliers providing products only became the suppliers for providing comprehensive solutions, for example, products and service. So in addition to the traditional functional expansion, the focus of R&D is the related technology. By-Health has 18 patents of invention, 33 utility model patents, 29 design patents and more than 100 research papers. In the aspect of resource, collaborative innovation is the core R&D strategy ofBy-Health. By-Health cooperates with both upstream and downstream companies and even with academic institution, aiming at creating a platform which is open to material suppliers, academic institutions, cooperators and even to competitors.

Recent years, people know more about precise nutrition, but there are still many challenges in related basic researches and transformations. Thus focusing on the concept that ” comprehensive health” , By-Health makes a global strategy and invests more than ten different companies, and most of them belong to the field of comprehensive health, and there are two overseas funds which focus on life sciences and AI respectively.

For improving the level of scientific research and make higher quality nutrients,recent years, By-Health accelerates the cooperation with internationalauthoritative scientific research institutions.For example, ithas signed global strategic cooperation agreements with British University of Aberdeen, Rottweiler Nutrition and Health ResearchInstitute and New Zealand Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd. and so on.

By-Health’s R&D of Precise Nutrition: We Are Fighting for a New Era of Precise Nutrition

For the application of precise nutrition, there are a lot of basic work to do, such as basic research, mechanism research, omics research, omics database and precise nutrition knowledge database. Therefore, By-Health is actively organizing all aspects of data sharing and joint projects.

What By-Health wants to construct is a shared information technology database. It can make a comprehensive analysis for omics, nutrients, life habits and new nutrition markers and so on, and after that, it will construct a dynamic personal health evaluation system.

For achieving this goal, By-Health is actively applying for some projects which are related to markers, and joins European Nutritional Genomics Organization (NuGO), and participates in the basic research of precision nutrition. Because we realized how difficult this sector is, and how urgent it is to build the methods, to find markers, Dr. Zhang said.

In the end, Dr. Zhang said that By-Health is constructing a cooperative innovation platform, and he hopes more and more cooperators to join this platform and participate in the R&D of precise nutrition finally.