A2, AgResearch win $1.15m government research grant

A2, AgResearch win $1.15m government research grant

AgResearch’s Matthew Barnett, who will lead the research with A2 Milk’s chief scientific officer Andrew Clarke, says they believe there are some variants in milk proteins that some people, particularly Asians, don’t tolerate very well, based on preliminary research.

“What we’ve found is that A2 milk does behave differently from some other milks in terms of intestinal function and particularly, it seems to either avoid or reduce the possibility of intestinal inflammation,” Mr Barnett says.

“We’ve worked closely with the A2 Milk company for a while now, on and off, and they’ve done some of their own research which they thought was promising,” he says.

“Essentially, some people avoid diary and some of them do that because they believe they’re lactose intolerant. What we think is that’s true for some people but for other people it may not be and A2 might enable more people to drink milk than otherwise do,” he says.

“So, a great business opportunity for A2 if they can show that.”

Mr Barnett says the plan is to run a pilot study involving 12 people initially and then to do a larger study involving about 40 people.

The study also involves the University of Auckland.