Unveiling the potential of Postbiotics: Developing a new generation of functional food additives

• Grant number: 24/19370-7
• Support Opportunities: Generation Project Research Grant
• Start date: February 01, 2026
• End date: January 31, 2031
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Applied Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: Cristian Mauricio Barreto Pinilla
• Grantee: Cristian Mauricio Barreto Pinilla
• Host Institution: Instituto de Tecnologia de Alimentos (ITAL). Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios (APTA). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: Campinas
• Associated researchers: Adriana Torres Silva e Alves ; Celso Gabriel Vinderola ; Frank Lino Guzman Escudero

Abstract

As people become increasingly aware of the importance of taking care of their health, they are also increasingly aware of the potentially negative impact of consuming synthetic preservatives in food. Consequently, the food industry has sought to develop safe, natural, and environmentally friendly food additives to meet the nutritional and health needs of consumers. Given this, it has recently been discovered that inactivated microbial cells and their metabolites, known as "postbiotics", have interesting properties as preservatives in food and functional properties similar to those found in live probiotic bacteria. The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) has defined postbiotics as "a preparation of non-living microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit to the host". Recent studies have shown that postbiotics produced from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a viable alternative to improve food quality and safety, in addition to acting as functional compounds that stimulate the immune system and improve the intestinal barrier. Postbiotics are easy to produce and have antimicrobial and antioxidant effects due to the presence of several compounds including organic acids, bacteriocins, exopolysaccharides, and bioactive peptides. However, despite their enormous potential, several key factors in the production, characterization, and application of postbiotics in food have not yet been analyzed, creating a conceptual and technological gap that has not allowed exploring their potential as a new generation of functional food additives.Thus, this project proposes the development of research that allows the identification, understanding, and development of postbiotics for use as functional food additives, through a transversal and multidisciplinary approach. To this end, postbiotics from standard LAB and indigenous Brazilian strains will be produced. The products obtained from the inactivation of LAB cells will be evaluated regarding their bioactive properties (antimicrobial and antioxidant), cytotoxicity, and anti-inflammatory properties in a cellular model. Subsequently, the postbiotics with the best bioactive properties will be produced in a bioreactor to optimize their production. Then, will be performed their characterization through proteomic and metabolomic analyses to identify the compounds responsible for their bioactive properties, their metabolic pathways, and mechanisms of antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. Subsequently, the postbiotics will be evaluated as functional additives. Initially, this food model will be used, to study their effectiveness in controlling pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms, and their effect on microbial communities through metagenomic analysis.In this project is expected the creation of a new line of research at ITAL for the production, characterization, and evaluation of the applications of postbiotics, initially focused on the conservation and production of functional dairy products, but with applications in various sectors of the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and packaging industries; which may later be subject to patents and technology transfer. Furthermore, it is expected to have a greater understanding of the postbiotic production methods, and to have a more complete view of their composition, functional properties, and mechanism of activity, through the use of state-of-the-art analytical tools and bioprocess optimization, enabling new studies of high scientific impact and the training of human resources with multidisciplinary projects. Furthermore, this project may represent the first step towards producing new alternatives of natural preservatives with the capacity to offer benefits to the consumer's health. (AU)