PARTICIPATION AS PARTNER IN PRIMA PROJECT

The University of Milan was founded in 1924. At the University various disciplines are studied that belong to 3 major areas of knowledge: Life Sciences (LS – Life Science), Social and Human Sciences (SH – Social Sciences and Humanities) and Hard Sciences (PE – Physical Sciences and Engineering ). The Department of Food, Nutrition and Environmental Sciences (DeFENS) was founded in May 2012 from the confluence of three previous UNIMI Departments, with the intention of giving continuity to the research and of creating new synergies between individual experiences, research activities in the sector of food, agro-environmental and nutrition sciences.

Our research activity has been focused on the study of natural substances by following research lines: isolation, purification and structural determination of bioactive compounds by NMR spectroscopy. Subsequently the interaction between oligonucleotides and bioactive compounds can be studied by NMR and Molecular Modeling. Beside of the this research, efforts will be dedicated to the generation of a small in-house collection of extracts, enriched fractions and single bioactive derived from different food waste. Innovative/green extractions of agri-food waste (enzymatic, MW, ASE, ultra-sound-assisted extraction procedures) will be studied and optimized. Total phenolic and total flavonoids contents as well as phenolic profile of the extracts could be determinate in our laboratory.

NMR, bioactive compounds, oligonucleotides, green extraction, Molecular Modeling.