Thursday 28 March 2024

The grapes of eternal youth

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Grapes hold the secret key to eternal youth. From the chaff of the Galician Albariño, the residue that remains after the pressing of the grapes in a cellar. i-Grape extracts a natural liquid with antioxidant and antibiotic properties from the chaff itself. Usages range from cosmetic creams to pharma and veterinary treatments. i-Grape, which has just launched , is the brainchild of a research group at the University Campus in Santiago de Compostela. They have also patented successfully their product and have been awarded several prizes like the prestigious Argos award as the best start-up-company of the year. Businesses in Galicia are now on the rise due to groups of scientists and scholars that willngly get together to research and work on new projects.

LIDSA team of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
LIDSA team of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

Grapes secret is their huge content of Polyphenols, which act as antioxidants and protect cells and body chemicals against damage caused by free radicals, reactive atoms that contribute to tissue damage and prevent aging, cardivascular diseases and cancer. They appear in huge quantities in wine, and that is why a moderate consumption of wine is good for our health. Also they remain in the wine chaff, which is employed by the wine cellars to produce aguardientes (Galician sugar cane liquor) and it is a residue or substance that is seemingly hard to dispose of and rather unmanagable and costly for some wineries.

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Juan Verdes,  one of i-Grape line managers says “Our own raw materials, like the Galician chaff, is great for a company like ours, we can solve a problem for the wineries and in the process, we can do some business .”

Grapes secret is their huge content of Polyphenols, which act as antioxidants

A Ponteareas  company will exploit the rights to the patent for cosmetic creams whereas the Coristanco farm and another one in Ulla have already tested the organic antibiotic in cows, with zero side effects. Overall, in the milk production in Galicia. Juan Verdes  points out that “The product by i-Grape allows the cows to be treated naturally for Mastitis without the use of synthetic antibiotics, but the organic ones they have just marketed are much healthier, and most of the times the cattle has to be quarantined if otherwise.’

Polyphenols of the grape.
Polyphenols of the grape.

The humble trading beginnings of i-Grape, from a Galician university campus research group to a well-established and innovative business, sparked at LIDSA, the Laboratorio de Investigación e Desenvolvemento de Solucións Analíticas, linked to the Department of Chemistry at the University Campus in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Marta Lores, an experienced researcher lead a team that has been researching the main properties and applications of the Galician grape chaff always in concert with the Top 5 Galician wineries and cellars.

After a few startling discoveries,  the company’s success is based on having achieved favorable peer reviews in scientific magazines nationwide. Then, they came up with the idea of setting up the company and started off trading rightaway. Marta Álvarez joined the team of scientists at the company together with the local big pharma researcher Jesús Álvarez and two more capitalist investors were added to the company’s roster: Daniel Gómez and Juan Verdes, both of them hold MBA’s, which makes them perfect candidates to manage the financial and trading side of the i-Grape business.

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