The Marine Health and Nutrition Products team at CMBD focuses on the research and development of functional food and medicines from both marine and terrestrial environments. Our research is based on cutting-edge biotechnology, as well as traditional “Edible medicines theory and practice” that has been applied in ancient medicine for thousands of years. With our industry partners, we aim to develop a series of functional foods and products to improve the quality of life and the overall health and wellbeing of the human population.
The marine environment is a virtual treasure chest of health-supporting bioresources for medicines, food additives, and cosmetics.
CMBD researchers are currently building upon 5000 years of traditional therapeutic medicine to address a wide range of ailments. This tradition has longstanding success in health support via medicines derived from more than one thousand marine organisms.
The growing population of people who suffer from health issues, along with a greater ratio of older people in society has led to increased demand for health products with functional properties such as anti-fatigue, memory support, immunomodulation, and age delay. Hence, a growing research area is the development of functional foods based on edible marine resources to manage health and wellbeing.
Functional foods contain ingredients that provide more than nutrition. They improve the quality of life and reduce the risk of disease for better health and wellbeing. Marine resources such as algae, sea cucumbers, and oysters have been used, particularly in the Southeast Asian region, for thousands of years due to their high medicinal properties and nutritional value.
“Many Marine-derived bioactive compounds, for example, omega-3 fatty acids, chitosan, chitosan, carotenoids, phenols, protein, have been applied as functional food ingredients”, says Dr. Qi Liang, a research scientist of CMBD. She believes in the benefits of a research methodology for functional food processing that is a combination of marine materials for cutting-edge advanced food technology and traditional therapeutic use.