Advanced Extraction and Formulation of Functional Tannin Food Supplements with Beneficial Health Effects

The goal role of the proposed project is to extract and purify tannins from plant materials (chestnut wood, oak wood) and afterward develop a final product that will be used as a dietary supplement. There has been a global tendency towards the use of natural bioactive components in the food, pharmaceutical and especially the phytopharmaceutical industries. In the first part of the project, extraction from natural sources (chestnut wood, oak wood etc.) using classical extraction techniques and supercritical fluis augmented by microwaves and ultrasound extraction will be investigated. Research will be focused on the isolation of main tannins e.g. vescalin, castalin, veskalagin, kastalagin, grandinin, roburin E, Roburin D etc.. In the second part the bio-based product formulation by design will be performed. Work will also focus on the formulation of the obtained extracts into specific forms like powders, designed for a specific use. The third part of the project will study biological activity of crude extracts and isolated tannins. In vitro tests using human cells will be carried out to prove the bio activity and bio compatibility of the respective isolated substances with targeted cells. In the final part the potential technological schemes and process parameters for scale up will be presented. For the identification of isolated compound and formulated products modern analytical methods like HPLC, HS-GC-MS, LC-MS/MS, NMR etc.) will be applied. Processes used for extraction, purification and formulation of tannins into the final form of a functional supplement product will increase the competitiveness of the industrial partner Tanin Sevnica d.d on a global scale.