SASKATOON – A University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team’s quest to extract protein from more than a billion litres of annually produced wastewater (called thin stillage) at Saskatchewan’s ethanol plants has yielded something far more valuable—a compound used in many countries to slow cognition loss in Alzheimer’s patients.
That compound is glyceryl phosphoryl choline (GPC) which is sold as a pharmaceutical drug (choline alfoscerate) for Alzheimer’s patients in Korea, Russia and some eastern European and South American countries, and as a cognition enhancer (nootropic) in North America.