SBIR Phase I: New Crystallization Modifiers for Low Calorie Fats in Food Products

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是促进新的低热量脂肪技术的商业化，以解决美国面临的一些最大的肥胖和相关健康问题，同时提供一个可申请专利的新添加剂平台，以销售或许可给6000亿美元的食品行业。由于高热量密度食物是肥胖症流行的主要原因，促进低热量脂肪替代品将对社会大部分人的健康产生强大的影响，降低医疗保健成本并提供积极的经济影响。在当地，这项技术的发展将导致高科技工作在南卡罗来纳州的潜在增长。这个第一阶段的研究项目的目标是解决日益增长的肥胖流行病在美国通过发展新的分子结构的结晶改性剂，低热量的脂肪替代品，已被证明可以减少90%的热量摄入。 之前将脂肪替代品技术商业化的尝试，例如PG的Olestra，遇到了脂肪替代品从肛门泄漏到体外的问题，这大大降低了它们的市场接受度。Tetramer已经解决了这个问题，但是由于使用了创新的分子结构，必须开发一套新的商业结晶改性剂，其可以改变结晶速率以最佳地匹配当前天然脂肪产品的性能。因此，关键的技术目标是确定四聚体的根本机理如何？新的结晶改性剂可以解决在含有低热量脂肪分解剂的食品组合物的生产过程中控制结晶速率的成核和晶体生长模式。 开发的结构/活性关系将允许一类新的结晶改性剂商业化，这将允许减脂技术更迅速地应用于食品工业中的大市场。这些新结构也可以应用于非食品应用，如聚合物产品的澄清剂。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to facilitate the commercialization of new low calorie fat technology to solve some of the largest obesity and related health issues facing the United States while providing a patentable new additive platform to sell or license to the $600 billion food industry. With high caloric density foods being the primary cause for the obesity epidemic, the facilitation of low calorie fat substitutes will have a powerful impact on the health of a large portion of society, reducing health care costs and providing a positive economic impact. Locally, the development of this technology will result in potential growth of high technology jobs in South Carolina.The objectives of this Phase I research project are to address the growing obesity epidemic in the US through the development of new molecular architectures for crystallization modifiers a low calorie fat substitutes which have been shown to reduce caloric intake by 90%. Previous attempts to commercialize fat substitute technology, such as Olestra from P&G, have encountered issues with undesirable anal leakage of the fat substitute out of the body which have dramatically reduced their market acceptance. This issue has been addressed by Tetramer, but due to the innovative molecular structures used, a suite of new commercial crystallization modifiers must be developed which can modify the crystallization rates to best match the performance of current natural fat products. Therefore, the key technical objectives are to determine the fundamental mechanism of how Tetramer?s new crystallization modifiers can solve both the nucleation and crystal growth modes governing the crystallization rates during manufacture of food compositions containing low calorie fat replacers. The structure/activity relationships developed will allow a new class of crystallization modifiers to be commercialized which will allow the fat reduction technology to be more rapidly applied to the large markets within the food industry. These new structures could also be applied to non-food applications such as clarifiers for polymer products.