Ananthamurthy Koteshwara receives award for his innovation on bloat free milk

Ananthamurthy Koteshwara, research scholar in the department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, bagged the ‘Innovation Day award’ for the project titled “Lactosans; The bloat free milk” during Manipal University’s premier innovation event held at Innovation Centre, MIT on 28 October 2017. 49 teams from various Manipal group institutions participated in the event. Members of the team were Dr Jesil Mathew A, Associate Professor, L Gopi Chand, Second Year MPharm student and Aditya Kiran Gatta, Research Scholar.

Objective of the Lactosans technology was to prepare bloat free milk. Milk consumption is very high in India. However, most adults do not have the ability to digest milk. This is due to the lack of digestive enzymes for metabolizing lactose- the principle sugar content in milk. Milk consists of 4.5-5% of lactose, a disaccharide, made up of a glucose and a galactose molecule. Undigested lactose is used by gut bacteria to produce copious amounts of gas and acid. Bloating ensues. Long-term lactose intolerance has been shown to result in Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Gastroesophageal reflux disease. Being a non-trivial source of calcium and vitamin D; avoiding milk is not the right solution especially for vegetarians. With Lactosans technology, milk is made nutritionally available for a larger population by pre-digesting lactose using immobilized lactase enzyme. The enzyme is recovered and reused, thus reducing the cost of production.

MCOPS congratulates the team and wishes them success for the technology