A Canadian teen has invented a disease-fighting, anti-aging formula derived from a compound found in trees – a development that took top national honors in a national biotech science competition.
Janelle Tam – a 16-year-old student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute – discovered the powerful antioxidant in tree pulp and experts said the finding could one day lead to new health and anti-aging products that neutralize disease-causing free radicals.
For her discovery, Tam took the top award in the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada competition judged by the National Research Council of Canada.
Tam’s research focused on cellulose, the woody material found in trees. Cellulose is made up of tiny nano-particles called nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) that are thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Tam’s work is the first to show that NCC – now used as a filler and stabilizer in vitamins -- is a powerful antioxidant in its own right. It may even be superior to vitamins C or E in anti-aging treatments and as a therapeutic agent that could be used to heal wounds, she said.
"NCC is non-toxic, stable, soluble in water and renewable, since it comes from trees," she said.
Tam’s work was among 192 projects that entered the SBCC competition, now in its 19th year.