Replacing ingredients with chemical or industrialized additives with natural inputs is one of the main paths currently pursued by the food, cosmetics and nutraceutical industries (manufacturer of dietary supplements and substances that prevent diseases). Consumers are more demanding and have given preference to products made from natural ingredients and with less risk of harm to their health. Even better if these ingredients are environmentally friendly.
In this race for healthier and more environmentally sustainable inputs, passion fruit has stood out as a valuable source of bioactives beneficial to the body and, at the same time, viable for commercial use. These were the results of research developed in partnership between specialists from the Faculty of Food Engineering at the State University of Campinas (FEA Unicamp) and Rubian Extratos, a daughter company of Unicamp that already successfully offers bioactive extracts on the market. passion fruit, thus completing the innovation cycle.
The rich properties of passion fruit
The research was conducted at FEA Unicamp by a group led by professor Julian Martínez, who found that passion fruit contains bioactive compounds in its seeds with the potential to prevent skin aging. “This is due to its properties that stimulate cell renewal and collagen production,” explains Professor Martínez.
Acting as a partner in this research, Rubian Extratos licensed the patent, filed with the support of the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency, to offer passion fruit bioactive extracts on the market. Today, Rubian supplies these extracts mainly to companies in the cosmetics sector, which use passion fruit bioactives as components of products such as serums and moisturizing or skin cleansing lotions.
Research into an antioxidant complex containing natural bioactives recombined from passion fruit seeds, which demonstrated its anti-aging properties, began a few years ago. The developed emulsion also presented sensory characteristics suitable for use in the cosmetic industry.
According to Professor Martínez, the combined extracts in the form of miniemulsions concentrate in a single product the bioactive properties of the lipid and hydroethanolic part of passion fruit (Passiflora). Other research has already demonstrated that these extracts have the capacity to inhibit the enzymes responsible for the degradation of elastin and collagen, in addition to promoting the proliferation of keratinocytes, which act in cell renewal.
A new method for obtaining extracts
Other important results of the research conducted by Professor Martínez's team extended to its extraction method.
This is also an important issue for the industry, as, in addition to prioritizing the use of plant extracts rich in bioactives, manufacturers also seek to use methods of obtaining extracts that are effective and not harmful to the environment. Conventional techniques present problems related to their yield, the time taken to obtain them and the use of solvents, that is, they can compromise the quality of the extracts and also cause environmental damage.
The new technology developed for the extraction process uses pressurized fluids to obtain bioactive compounds from passion fruit. Through a continuous extraction method, which allows the solute-free solvent to permeate the pores of the raw material particles, it becomes possible to intensify the extraction, that is, it allows the productivity of the extract to be increased. Furthermore, the method developed facilitates the scaling of the process, something vital for the industry, which can produce the extract on a large scale for use in foods, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and cosmetics.
Rubian Extratos, a strategic partner in research
The advancement of research based on passion fruit, among other natural sources, by the FEA Unicamp team has, for some years now, included an important partnership with Rubian Extratos, a daughter company of Unicamp. Professor Martínez explains that “our research group's work with Rubian Extratos began a few years ago, following the company's interest in what we had been developing, such as the extraction of bioactives from passion fruit pomace, which generated a request for patent and technology licensing by Rubian”.
Chemical engineer Eduardo Aledo, general manager and one of the partners at Rubian Extratos, highlights the importance of this partnership with FEA researchers in the company's development: “we work in continuous partnership with Unicamp. We bridge technical and scientific knowledge with the market. The development of our bioactives always involves academia, and this is one of our main competitive differentiators,” he states.
Rubian develops and produces plant extracts rich in bioactives, used as inputs in the manufacture of products for the cosmetic, food and dietary supplement industries.
The company began at Unicamp in 2014, when the partners participated in the Desafio Unicamp competition, organized by Inova, and this sparked the idea of creating a startup using Unicamp technologies as the basis of their business.
Subsequently, the startup joined the incubation program of Unicamp's Technology-Based Business Incubator (Incamp) and, since then, has started to license patents for new extraction and application processes for natural bioactives, developed in partnership with FEA researchers. .
Rubian Extratos operates mainly in the B2B sector as a supplier of these inputs, which stand out for their superior quality. According to Eduardo Aledo, one of the founding partners of Rubian and who was a business mentor for the team that competed in the Unicamp Challenge, the reason for this level is the continuous investments in research, in partnership with Unicamp and other institutions, which result in bioactives with a unusual quality level on the market:
“The products we offer are developed after a lot of scientific research and exhaustive tests. And this basis on scientific data attests to our credibility and guarantees greater security for our customers. On the market, there are extract companies with a huge variety in their product menu. But they are far from having the same scientific depth we seek to achieve. Therefore, we work with more selective bioactives that can better preserve the original properties of the matrices and seeds, which guarantees superior performance”, explains Aledo.
