The development and assessment of a PEC based platform for the delivery of dietary iron chelators to the large bowel

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Iron is a very important micronutrient and unsurprisingly low levels within the body are associated with iron deficiency and anaemia. However, conversely there is also evidence that consuming too much iron is similarly detrimental to health and in particularly the health of your gut. Recent studies have shown that in the majority of adults we consume an excess of iron in our diets and the vast majority of this iron never gets absorbed by our bodies. Instead this pool of iron ends up in the large bowel where it can reside for between hours to days before it is then excreted. In particular recent studies have shown that this pool of iron is detrimental to gut health and this is likely mediated by altering the types of bacteria which normally colonise the large bowel. Thus our application is designed to create a unique formulation which could be used to mop up this pool of toxic iron which resides within the colon and thereby enhance intestinal health. This could be achieved by using experimental drugs with known iron neutralising properties but since these can be toxic we instead propose to identify natural agents which might be able to neutralise iron. One such molecule is alginate which is seaweed derived, used throughout the food industry and which has potent iron neutralising properties. Thus the aim of this study is to screen a large panel of natural food agents like alginate with the hope of identifying a molecule with the strongest iron neutralising properties. Once we identify such a molecule we wish to create a formulation which will ensure that when humans consume it the molecule will only become active in the large bowel where the excess iron resides. This formulation will be tested in an artificial model of the gut and if successful we will conduct a study with healthy volunteers to assess its bioactivity. If successful this could lead to the development of food products which could be used to enhance intestinal health.