University of Nottingham Malaysia has partnered with Fuller Young International Limited to develop functional food products from papaya for the treatment of dengue fever as well as age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and hypertension.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between UNM and Fuller Young International Limited on 8 July 2021 to mark the partnership.
Fuller Young International is a functional food and nutraceutical company based in Queenstown, New Zealand. The company plants papaya trees and processes its papaya leaf extract in Japan and New Zealand.
Through this partnership, the company will work together with the research team from UNM led by Dr Ching Lik Hii from the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Research in scholarly journals has reported potential health benefits of papaya leaves as herbal medicine in the treatment of various illnesses and diseases including dengue fever.
The research is still ongoing and needs to undergo rounds of clinical testing on people before the team can move on to the commercialisation phase. Once this phase is completed, Fuller Young will begin the production of capsules containing the compounds extracted from the papaya leaf, to be marketed to consumers in Malaysia and the greater Southeast Asian region.
‘’We are very pleased to have Fuller Young International collaborating with us, this is a huge milestone and together we will explore further the benefits of papaya leaves and provide potential solutions to dengue fever well beyond the Malaysian shores,” said Dr Hii.
The current research team members from UNM also include Dr Sze Pheng Ong from the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Professor Kuan Hon Lim from the School of Pharmacy. In a previous Fundamental Research Grant Scheme project funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, the team extracted carpaine from papaya leaves and studied the effects of processing parameters.
“It is wonderful to witness this collaboration as an important milestone towards the commercialisation of this products developed by our researchers to benefit our community at large,” said Professor Dominic Foo, Head of the UNM Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.