FYP presentations: class 2023, bronze award

From L to R: Katie Mahon, Claudia Lennon, Ciara Geraghty and Ioannis Zabetakis

 

On Wednesday 29th March 2023, the FYP presentations of the 4th year students in BSc Food Science and Health (class 2023) took place in Pavilion at UL.

Ciara, Claudia and Katie presented their project on the lipid profile of a novel yoghurt drink and they were awarded the bronze award from our colleagues in Kerry Group (Drs Call Flynn and Edward Costello). Over the past two years, in our group at the Department of Biological Sciences in UL, we have developed a novel yoghurt drink from sheep (ovine) milk in collaboration with Rockfield Ltd and the support of Enterprise Ireland. The FYP project was on the characterization of the lipid profile of this drink.

Related publications:

The effect of ovine milk fermentation on the antithrombotic properties of polar lipids

Yoghurt fermentation alters the composition and antiplatelet properties of milk polar lipids

  

Yoghurt drink and prostate cancer

Source: The Times.

Prostate cancer patients may one day be given a yoghurt drink alongside drugs to boost their survival chances after scientists found that bugs in the gut could drive tumour growth and make treatment less effective.

Men with advanced prostate cancer are typically given therapy to lower their levels of androgens, male hormones, which their tumours need to grow. Some patients, however, develop resistance to that treatment.

A team led by the Institute for Cancer Research has found for the first time that bacteria in their guts could be responsible, with some species providing an alternative source of the hormones.

(...)

The study, which will be published in the journal Science tomorrow, was funded by the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Movember, Prostate Cancer UK, Cancer Research UK and The John Black Charitable Foundation.

Dr Matthew Hobbs, director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “We’re delighted to have helped fund this innovative, boundary-pushing research, which provides the first ever clues as to how ‘gut bugs’ might play a role in stopping prostate cancer becoming resistant to treatments.

“We urgently need to understand more about why treatments like androgen deprivation therapy eventually stop working, allowing men’s cancer to grow and progress. This research opens up a totally new avenue for us to explore — one which has potential to make a huge difference to men.”

new project on ovine yoghurt drink

 

We just secured funding from Enterprise Ireland to work on the production of a novel yoghurt drink made from ovine milk and its bioactivities against platelet aggregation. 

It's an Innovation Partnership project collaborating with Rockfield Dairy Ltd.

We are going to soon hire a post-doctoral researcher for this 12months project, if you want to pass the word round, it would be great.

Relevant prior knowledge on this area is here and here.

Watch this area for further updates.