Nutritional Sciences Professor Denise Ney and a team of other researchers at UW-Madison and Boston Children’s Hospital have reached a major milestone in efforts to improve quality of life for individuals with the rare genetic disease phenylketonuria, or PKU.
People with PKU have typically been required to adhere to diets that are rigidly controlled in order to avoid buildup of phenylalanine, one of the amino acid building blocks of protein, but Ney and her partners have established that foods made with a protein called glycomacropeptide, or GMP, are both safe and more palatable than traditional medically formulated diets. GMP-based foods may be cheaper, too, as GMP is abundant — it’s a component of the whey left behind when curds form during cheesemaking. For more on Ney’s research, see here and here.