28 Oct Yili Innovation Center wins first poster prize at 9th Microbiome R&D and business collaboration forum Europe in Rotterdam
On October 27th, 2021, Yili Innovation Center won the first prize in the poster competition of the 9th Microbiome R&D and business collaboration forum Europe taking place in Rotterdam. The award-winning research of Yili’s probiotics research center revealed the beneficial health effects of their newly developed probiotic strain, Lacticaseibacillus paracasei K56. Giving this strain to obese mice leads to a reduction of their weight gain and insulin resistance even though the mice are fed a diet high in fat. Dr. Adrienne Weiss presented the study results for the new K56 strain and its effects in obese mice at the conference in Rotterdam.
Probiotics have been reported to play a major role in modulating the gut microbiota and some strains confer beneficial effects on obese individuals. Strain K56 was isolated from the faeces of a healthy infant. The potential benefits of K56 on alleviating the impacts of obesity were assessed using a model based on high-fat diet-induced obesity in mice.
K56 was able to attenuate high-fat diet-induced obesity by inhibiting an increase of body weight, visceral fat, fat mass and blood lipids. K56 supplementation also improved several markers of insulin resistance. This health-promoting effect of K56 is probably mediated by the changes it induces in the gut microbiota. Certain obesity-related gut microbes were reduced by intake of K56, while gut bacteria with the opposite effect were increased with this probiotic. K56 alone was effective in eliciting weight loss but there appeared to be a synergistic effect on weight loss when combined with α-galacto-oligosaccharides (α-GOS).
L. paracasei K56 was confirmed to be safe and might be a promising probiotic strain that could effectively slow down body weight gain, reduce fat accumulation, alleviate insulin resistance and restore pancreatic β-cell function in obese mice by regulating the gut microbiota.