Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., the agricultural cooperative owned by more than 700 farmer families, and Canomiks, a startup technology company transforming the functional food and beverage industry, announced research leveraging Canomiks’ A.I. based technology platform to test and certify the biological efficacy of the cranberry. The relationship with Canomiks, through Ocean Spray’s existing partnership with the incubator Plug and Play, enables the company to further validate the superfruit nature of cranberry’s biological efficacy.
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Canomiks used their genomics, bioinformatics, and AI-based technology to test cranberry bioactive components called polyphenols to demonstrate that these bioactives can positively influence genomic pathways responsible for modulating blood pressure and blood flow. Ocean Spray provided concentrate and fruit extracts containing naturally occurring cranberry bioactives and Canomiks applied its exclusive IP and groundbreaking technology to test and validate the efficacy of these components, finding that the cranberry’s support of heart health and overall blood pressure maintenance pathways align with previous clinical trial results. (Novotny 2015, Chew 2018, Richter 2021). These trials demonstrated the way in which cranberry juice consumption aided in the improvement of blood pressure, while the current data provided the potential modes of action and for unlocking and evaluating the hidden health elements of cranberries.
“This is an exciting initiative from our Emerging Science team intended to accelerate discovery research and study the benefits of bioactive compounds in the cranberries, supporting our belief that food is medicine and consuming a diet rich in plant bioactives, such as those found in cranberries, can help support health including benefitting heart health,” said Katy Galle, Senior Vice President of Research & Development at Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.
“The area of food as medicine has been explored for many years and this research is principal in taking a step forward to making it a reality and inform future innovation from Ocean Spray,” said Dr. Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk, CEO and co-founder of Canomiks. “We are thrilled to further this research with Ocean Spray and our work with Plug and Play.”
These results also build upon Ocean Spray’s recent collaboration with Brightseed, a relationship that leveraged Brightseed’s A.I., Forager technology in order to analyze and profile the phytochemical structure of cranberries at a granular level, forming the fundamental basis of Ocean Spray’s functional products going forward. Bioactive components in cranberries were also identified that further established cranberry and cranberry ingredients’ modulation of inflammation and immunity pathways.
Cranberries have already deeply established the significance of the fruit’s health properties, particularly for their ability to support urinary tract health. These current studies that apply AI-based technology and bioinformatics support Ocean Spray’s belief that food is medicine and consuming a diet rich in plant bioactives such as those found in cranberries can aid in supporting overall health and, specifically, heart health.