InfoSAWIT, BANDUNG – A researcher of Ahli Madya from Pusat Riset Vaksin dan Obat managed by Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), Asep Bayu successfully found the research to develop E super vitamin which is full of tocotrienol. It is taken as the potential to get immune therapy for cancer that significantly joins economic profits and biological advantages.
Palm oil as one mainstay commodity in Indonesia provides materials to develop E super vitamin. Asep Bayu told that palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), the side product of fatty acid from palm oil, has the highest tocotrienol of fatty acid distillate from other vegetable oils. Tocotrienol itself has high economic value because its biological activity is twice better than tocopherol.
In the research phase that he explained in Monitoring dan Evaluasi Grant Riset Sawit from Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency, the first research involved tocotrienol extraction from PFAD. The process involved the substance of deep eutectic solvents (DES) and added methanol to escalate vitamin component mass during the extraction.
“The first year - research showed that PFAD has antioxidant activity 2,5 higher than free tocotrienol. Nano emulsion of tocotrienol showed cytotoxic was against breast and lungs cancers within concentration 50 - 200 ppm," Asep Bayu said, as in the official statement to InfoSAWIT from the Public Relation of BRIN.
In the next years, Asep and his team planned to continue the research to get optimal condition in tocotrienol extraction by using the DES ChCl solvent in phenolic or betaine monohydrate group. Besides, they would focus on making NANOVITE formula to maximize E super vitamin potential as immune therapy.
Indonesia, as the number one palm oil producer in the world saw the innovation as te positive one to get advantage on natural resource sustainably. In Covid-19 crude palm oil (CPO) exports escalated from Indonesia, it plays strategic roles of palm oil to the economy nationally.
The innovation is hoped to not escalate palm oil industrial values, but also open the new potential of health technology and be more effective to get cancer therapy. (T2)