Bifunctional edible coatings for food preservation: antimicrobial peptides-producing probiotics as a sustainable strategy to enhance food safety and human health

The main objective of Pep2Coat is to develop bifunctional edible coatings that will both i) preserve food products from spoilage and ii) contribute to improve human gut’s health. To achieve this goal, the first step is to perform the identification, production, and characterization of antimicrobial peptides from next-generation probiotic candidates, with potential novel bioactivities, new targets and modes of action. These peptides are intended to be active preferably against food spoiling agents and, if possible, against human pathogens. Thus, this project will be contributing with different therapeutic alternatives to the currently worldwide crisis regarding bacterial and viral infections, while decreasing the waste of food due to spoilage. . The application of these peptides and further derived products will have a true-value application in the food field, with possible implication also in the biomedical and nutraceuticals fields meeting the goals proposed by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This project gathers a multidisciplinaty team from UCP and Universidade de Aveiro and also counts with international partners as external advisors.