NUCAPS, the consortium of Cinfa and Idifarma laboratories, CNTA and School of Pharmacy and Nutrition, is one of the five initiatives of Emprendimiento Universidad de Navarra that have recently obtained the support of Caja Rural to continue with their development as companies.

The initiative, which started in 2007-08 with a project Euroinnova between CNTA and the University, began with the research in functional foods and the development of nanoparticles - by department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology - to encapsulate bioactive compounds. Later, the project was expanded with biocapsules containing probiotics, to give rise to 4 patent families that are currently at different stages of development, but in some cases already have licenses approved in the USA and other countries.

"Now the consortium is going to go a step further by constituting itself as a business. The goal is to become a platform for development to apply the technology we have already developed to compounds of interest to other companies, to continue advancing in new technologies and to license the uses derived from all this," explains director of department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, Juan Manuel Irache.

Dietary proteins from corn, soybeans and milk

"In fact," adds the director of research center in Nutrition, Carlos Javier González Navarro, "we will continue to focus on four sectors that are strategic for us: food, nutrition, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. In each of them there are different regulations and requirements, which means that each product develops at a different pace". "However," adds Juan Manuel Irache, "since the basis of all our patents is the use of food proteins - from corn, soy and milk - to obtain nanoparticles with different uses, this basis has allowed us to comply with the requirements requirements of the different regulatory agencies.

To date, a complete preclinical study - toxicity, bioavailability, etc. - has been carried out on each of the nanoparticles at programs of study , in which numerous researchers have been involved, resulting in several doctoral thesis , scientific articles, and so on.