AltSU young researchers develop a medicine for bees from mushrooms

16 June 2021 Department of Information and Media Communications
Residents of AltSU's student business incubator have started to implement several promising projects at once, which are based on the use of edible mushrooms: Collybia dryophilla and Shiitake (Lentinula edodes), which is popular  in Japan and China.

Young researchers, who are led by Vitaly Tsarev, a researcher at the laboratory of industrial pharmacy and supercritical fluid technologies, and Olga Vysotskaya, Director of the Center for the Development of Technological Entrepreneurship, Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Management at Altai State University, are working to create beneficial products for the food industry.

In particular, one of the student teams headed by Associate Professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Institute of Chemistry and Chemical-Pharmaceutical Technologies at AltSU, Candidate of Biological Sciences  Denis Minakov designed a model for the use of several types of edible mushrooms in apicology to protect honey bees from various kinds of diseases.

Collybia dryophilla and Shiitake are grown in a nutrient substrate. Here, the best growing environment has been created - the absence of sunlight, certain levels of humidity and temperature. Young scientists use the mushrooms to obtain polysaccharides, which are then used to develop medicines for bees. A number of promising results have already been obtained; therefore, residents of the student business incubator of Altai State University have begun negotiations with industrial partners about the implementation of the project.

“Mushrooms are a promising area. Their cultivation requires less effort than research work with animals and plants. There are no analogues in Russia, although there is an international tendency towards the development of this scientific direction. We can obtain a lot of beneficial and healthy products from one mushroom,” says Vitaly Tsarev.

The team of Vlad Dybalev, a 2nd-year student of the Institute of Chemical Physics and Technology, is implementing a project in the field of biodegradable materials, developing a wide range of innovative products, from disposable tableware to packaging for industrial goods. They plan to isolate a polysaccharide complex from the mycelium of fungi, which will be used for degradable biomaterial.

Now the AltSU’s student business incubator is busy both scaling the projects and developing a more detailed approach to the development of specific innovative products.

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