New Line of disease defence

Fighting disease may no longer be the province of high tech drugs thanks to work by researchers in Adelaide and the Netherlands.

Instead, company Dutch Royal Numico, and its Adelaide subsidiary Numico Research Australia, are developing nutritional supplements to combat common and often debilitating infections and disease.

Dr Jereon van den Berg, who spoke at the Food Odyssey conference in Adelaide yesterday, said the research would revolutionise health care worldwide.

He said the company, which had worked extensively on nutrition support for hospital patients using drink or feed tubes, was developing condition-specific nutritional supplements for consumers.

"Nutritional management of hospital patients is increasingly recognised as an important factor influencing clinical outcomes and recovery," he said, "But new clinical and consumer nutrition products will bear more resemblance to pharmaceuticals and may be seen as nutraceuticals."

The company is targeting conditions such as heart disease and heart failure, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases such as cystic fibrosis, osteoporosis, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.  Dr van den Berg said the company was also looking at developing supplements to help people undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Numico expect to develop powder and pill versions of its products, any of which are in clinical trials around the world.

"We're looking at the physiology of the disease, food and nutrition that influence its progress, it could be used as a first line of defence," he said.

- The Adelaide Advertiser, July 3, 2001 pg 7.

ROTAVIRUS INFECTION, PASSIVE PROTECTION

A ProMED-mail post http://www.promedmail.org

ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases http://www.isid.org

Date: Thursday, 24 January 2002

From: Janina Pacyna janina.pacyna@numico-research.com.au

A Comment on the Prevention and Treatment of Rotavirus Infection

I have read your communication (see above reference) on the epidemic of rotavirus infection in infants in Foshan City, Canton Province, Southern China, with interest. Although a rotavirus vaccine is not currently available, another approach such as passive protection can be used. For many gastrointestinal infections the most important protective factor is the presence of specific antibody in the lumen of the small intestine. Passively acquired antibodies derived from cows hyperimmunized against rotavirus have been used for the prevention of rotavirus diarrhoea.

We have successfully developed hyperimmune bovine colostrum containing high levels of specific neutralising antibody to the 4 major human rotavirus strains. Successfully followed in hospitals and child care centres in Australia as well as in hospitals in developing countries, hyperimmune bovine colostrum
Gastrogard-R_® has been shown to reduce rotavirus diarrhoea significantly and to provide protection in infants and children from rotavirus cross-infection.

In addition several researchers have shown therapeutic efficacy of hyperimmune bovine colostrum in the treatment of rotavirus gastroenteritis. Hyperimmune bovine immunoglobulin has been shown to be safe and effective in diarrhoea prevention in humans for Cryptosporidium parvum, enterotoxigenic and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, Shigella flexneri, and Vibrio cholerae. Furthermore, we have shown that rotavirus antibody activity survived transit through the gut; therefore passive immunotherapy (pathogen specific) may also be used to prevent infectious diseases along the entire length of the gastrointestinal tract.

Passive protection is at present the only means of preventing rotavirus infection in children. However, when active vaccine become available, the use of passive protection will still be important in young infants and in children and adults who are unable to mount their own immune response. I am keen to hear from anyone who considers that passive immunity as an alternative to direct oral vaccine using hyperimmune bovine colostrum could be of benefit to them.

Janina Pacyna

Research Scientist/Project Leader

Numico Australia janina.pacyna@numico-research.com.au