Ayana Bio, a supplier of botanical bioactives sourced from its cultured plant cells, recently received a grant from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to research the production of saffron bioactives with neuroprotective benefits.
 
Saffron has been evidenced to support cognition across a range of age-related and neurological conditions, including depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer’s disease. Saffron has also been evidenced to aid in weight loss by increasing satiety.
 
A $300,000 NIH grant will fund Ayana Bio’s research to identify which complex of saffron bioactives can consistently demonstrate the highest neuroprotective benefits, specifically in Huntington’s disease. The company will use its high-throughput synthetic biology capabilities of sequencing, multi-omics technology, and analytical chemistry to explore and select the best plant cell lines.
 
The research will also address how plant cell cultivation can enhance the production of saffron’s bioactives by running a pre-clinical study on a C. elegans model of Huntington’s disease.
 
Identifying a standardized complex of bioactives that can be produced consistently will allow researchers to study saffron’s health benefits more effectively for a range of diseases, Ayana Bio reported.
 
Plant cell cultivation is a means to produce plant materials without growing plants in the ground. Saffron cells will be grown in temperature-controlled, stainless steel tanks that create a reliable source of real saffron and its beneficial bioactives, bypassing the quality issues associated with conventional agriculture.
 
Traditional production requires up to 170,000 flowers to produce one kilo of saffron, making it a prohibitively expensive ingredient. Climate change is worsening the challenges associated with saffron production, for which there is already a constrained supply chain.
 
“Saffron is a super ingredient for our brains, not just our taste buds, but it remains untapped due to its exorbitant cost,” said Frank Jaksch, CEO of Ayana Bio. “Today’s grant from the NIH is a validation of plant cell cultivation’s ability to unlock botanicals like saffron’s powerful benefits and improve health outcomes.”