It is a great pleasure to announce that Professor Paul Dupree has been awarded a £1-million Innovate UK Grant with The Supplant Company. He said of this prestigious award to support business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation:
“We are excited to be able to use our latest scientific research to support development of Supplant ingredients. This Innovate UK grant will continue the links between The Supplant Company and my group in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge which have been strong since foundation of the company. Our research can have real impact in developing healthy food that reduces agricultural impact on the environment”
Supplant was founded to create healthier alternatives to sugar with the potential to help tackle the global obesity epidemic. To date, the food industry’s attempts at ‘healthier’ product reformulation have achieved only partial success, but The Supplant Company’s ‘From Fibre’ ingredient platform can turn agriculture’s most abundant renewable resources - the forgotten half of the harvest, such as corn cobs, oat hulls, and wheat straw - into replacements for sugar and flour (starch) in food. The ingredients have the potential to tackle many of the systemic issues of the food industry- sustainability, environmental impact, food security and health.
“The Supplant Company's proven ability to deliver more sustainable and healthier ingredients is underpinned by scientific excellence,” said Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Jeremy Bartosiak-Jentys. “Being awarded the NutriBoost project with the Dupree Group at the University of Cambridge is recognition of this by Innovate UK, and will provide the foundation for further advances.”
He added: “The Supplant Company has deep connections with Paul Dupree’s Group since its founding and Paul Dupree continues to work with us in his role as Scientific Advisor. We look forward to continuing this relationship with his lab, as we look to fix three of the biggest problems faced by our global food system of poor nutrition, food insecurity, and environmental impact.” The CEO Tom Simmons previously worked in the Department of Biochemistry in the laboratory of Prof Paul Dupree, and they founded the company together in 2017.