The coast of Ireland is surrounded by a hugely valuable, largely untapped resource – seaweed. A major international conference at the Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin, looks at using this resource to generate novel food and pharma ingredients.
The Algae4IBD project, a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation project, looks at translating algae science into next-generation health ingredients, nutraceuticals, and therapeutic opportunities. focused on developing algae-derived solutions for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and related inflammatory conditions.
The conference brought together twenty-one partners from across Europe, combining multidisciplinary expertise in algae cultivation and biotechnology, immunology, pain research, gastroenterology, and food and nutraceutical development, spanning academia, healthcare institutions, and industry.
The project integrates the full value chain from marine biodiversity and biomass production to extraction, characterization, biological validation, and product formulation. Through this approach, Algae4IBD has generated scientifically validated, scalable ingredients and prototypes targeting inflammation, gut barrier function, microbiome modulation, and symptom management. These targets have a direct impact on human health for IBD suffers according to Dr Dorit Avni from MIGAL-Galilee Research Institute, the coordinator of Algae4IBD “By bridging research and commercialization, the project contributes to sustainable blue bioeconomy development while addressing significant unmet needs in chronic inflammatory diseases,” Dr Avni stated.
Professor Pat Dillon, Head of Research at Teagasc said that “Irish seaweeds, offer a huge opportunity to marine processors to develop new, food ingredients for health and wellness, and to diversify their market offerings through collaboration with traditional food industries including dairy and the prepared consumer foods sector.”
The lead Irish Partners, Teagasc, and the team at Ashtown includes Dr Maria Hayes, natural product chemistry, Dr Dolly Bhati, Dr Oyenike Olatunji and Dr Dilip Rai. Dr Hayes said “Over the course of 4 years, our team at Teagasc have worked to develop new, anti-inflammatory, and anti-pain ingredients and food product prototypes, in conjunction with Irish and EU companies including French Algae4IBD partners ALGAIA, based in Normandy, and Portuguese partners Necton S.A. - an Algarve based company. This conference showcased some of these findings.”
The work builds on nationally funded research projects including Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) funded U-Protein, which is led by Professor Mark Fenelon, Head of the Teagasc Food Research programme, The U-Protein project has a focus of developing alternative proteins from different plant resources, including seaweeds.
Over 180 different attendees were at the conference at Teagasc Ashtown, from different sectors including State Agencies Enterprise Ireland, Udaras na Gaeltachta, BIM, twenty-five different company representatives, as well as academic institutes from across Europe and Ireland, including UCD, TU Dublin, QUB, Trinity, and UCC.
Ends.