Introducing Nuritas: Using AI to Unlock Nature's Hidden Peptides

The supplement industry has an innovation problem. Walk down any supplement aisle and you'll find the same ingredients that have been around for decades... sometimes even a century or more. Whey protein, creatine, caffeine, melatonin. Yes, they work, but they're old. Now that the supplement industry has reached maturity and mainstream adoption, we now face the point where creating truly novel functional ingredients takes tens of millions of dollars and decades of research. Most companies simply can't afford it, which is why they keep recycling the same formulas with different branding.

But what if artificial intelligence could compress that decades-long discovery timeline into months? What if technology could unlock bioactive compounds hidden in nature that we never knew existed?

Nuritas: Intelligent Peptide Ingredients for the Functional Foods & Supplements Industries

That's exactly what Nuritas is doing, and it's why we're finally giving this Irish biotechnology company the full introduction it deserves on PricePlow. Using their proprietary AI Magnifier platform, they've discovered and commercialized clinically validated peptide ingredients like PeptiStrong® (for muscle strength and recovery) and PeptiSleep™ (for deep, restorative sleep) -- ingredients that simply couldn't exist without artificial intelligence.

The full story behind the company's founding, their brilliant AI Magnifier, and their novel peptide ingredients is below. Before we dig in, sign up for PricePlow's Nuritas news alerts so that you get notified on new studies, articles, interviews, and ingredient launches:

The Innovation Bottleneck

Here's the harsh reality: most "new" supplements aren't actually new. They're just different combinations or different form factors of the same ingredients we've used for decades. It's rare to see legitimately novel functional ingredients hit the market with unique mechanisms, real clinical backing, and sustainable sourcing.

This is because traditional ingredient discovery is brutally inefficient. Scientists might screen thousands of compounds hoping to find one that works. The process can take 20+ years and cost tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. Even then, success isn't guaranteed. This timeline made sense in 1985, but in 2025, we have tools that can do much better.

The supplement industry has been desperate for innovation, but the ingredients available haven't kept pace with consumer demand for healthier, more effective, and more sustainable solutions. Brands want to differentiate. Consumers want results in the ever-increasing modern onslaught against their health. Traditional discovery methods can't deliver either fast enough.

Enter Dr. Nora Khaldi and the Birth of Nuritas

Dr. Nora Khaldi didn't start her career thinking about supplements. She's a mathematician and computer scientist by training, with a Ph.D. in Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics. Her early work focused on drug discovery, where she watched pharmaceutical companies spend billions trying to develop new compounds.

Then she moved into nutrition and saw the same problem from a different angle.

"I started seeing very clear trends," Khaldi explains. "People were moving towards healthier, more natural, better products. Companies were trying to address that need -- food companies, supplement companies -- but with old ingredients that didn't really address consumers' needs."

The breakthrough realization? It wasn't just that new ingredients were hard to discover. It was that traditional methods made new ingredient discovery essentially impossible at any reasonable timeline or cost. If a company wanted a genuinely novel functional ingredient with proven benefits, they were looking at decades of work, if they succeeded at all.

So in 2014, Khaldi founded Nuritas with a singular mission: develop the technology to make ingredient discovery possible again. The goal wasn't just to create better supplements. It was to improve the lives of billions of people by replacing outdated, less effective ingredients with plant-based bioactive compounds that could actually transform human health.

The key would be artificial intelligence.

The AI Magnifier Platform: Making the Impossible, Possible

Traditional ingredient discovery is like searching for a needle in a haystack, except the haystack contains over a billion potential compounds from plants alone. That's not hyperbole. The number of possible amino acid and peptide combinations in nature is essentially infinite, larger than all the stars in all the galaxies combined.

Humans have explored only a tiny fraction of that space because, until recently, we didn't have the tools to do anything else at scale.

Nuritas' AI Magnifier platform changes everything.

At its core, peptides are short chains of amino acids -- the same building blocks that make up proteins. But peptides do something proteins don't: they act as signaling molecules. Khaldi calls them "the language of life" because peptides are how organisms communicate instructions at the cellular level. A peptide might tell your cells to release glucose, block cortisol secretion, increase ATP production, or activate muscle protein synthesis pathways.

The challenge is identifying which specific peptide sequences will produce which specific biological effects... and which plant sources contain them so that they can become viable dietary supplement ingredients.

That's where Nuritas' AI Magnifier comes in.

How It Works

The Magnifier platform combines artificial intelligence, genomics, and high-throughput screening to analyze billions of peptide possibilities. The system uses proprietary machine learning algorithms trained on massive datasets encompassing peptide structures, biological activities, and molecular interactions.

But it's not just about finding peptides that exist. The AI predicts which specific peptide sequences will have targeted health benefits before Nuritas ever steps into the laboratory. The platform considers multiple factors simultaneously: the 3D structure the peptide will adopt, how it will interact with biological targets, stability, bioavailability, and safety profiles.

The results speak for themselves:

• 10x faster than traditional methods
• 600x more accurate than conventional approaches
• Ability to discover entire networks of synergistic peptides working together

Once the AI predicts promising candidates, the Nuritas team validates them in their state-of-the-art laboratory. Every validation experiment feeds back into the algorithms, continuously improving prediction accuracy. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that gets better with each discovery.

The beauty of this approach is efficiency. Traditional discovery might screen thousands of compounds hoping to find one that works. The AI Magnifier narrows the field dramatically, pointing directly to the peptides most likely to succeed. What would have taken hundreds of years using conventional methods, Nuritas accomplishes in months.

Magnifier can also determine which ingredient sources best suit specific needs, ensuring food-grade status, GRAS status, optimal bioavailability, and sustainable sourcing. This enables faster commercialization paths to get novel ingredients into consumers' hands.

Cell-Signaling Plant Peptides: A New Category

Nuritas' ingredients form an entirely new category in the supplement world: cell-signaling peptide networks.

Yes, peptides are made from amino acids, just like proteins. But unlike traditional protein supplements that serve primarily as nutrients (building blocks for your body), these peptide networks function as instructions. They communicate directly with cellular receptors to trigger precise biological responses.

Think of it this way: regular protein powder gives your body raw materials. Cell-signaling peptides tell your body what to do with those materials.

This is a fundamental shift. Traditional functional ingredients work through basic nutritional pathways: you consume vitamin C, your body uses vitamin C. Cell-signaling peptides are more sophisticated. They activate specific mechanisms that weren't accessible through conventional supplementation.

The result? Ingredients that deliver measurable benefits that were simply impossible to achieve before. Benefits like dramatically improved recovery rate after intense training, deeper sleep architecture, or enhanced muscle protein synthesis... all backed by clinical data and detectable on biometric wearables.

Nuritas has commercialized two flagship dietary ingredients that showcase what this new category can do: PeptiStrong® for muscle health and PeptiSleep™ for sleep quality.

PeptiStrong®: Muscle Health from Fava Beans

PeptiStrong® is the ingredient that put Nuritas on the supplement industry's map, and for good reason. It's a pro-anabolic peptide network derived from faba bean protein that functions as a muscle-building and strength recovery ingredient... but not in the way you'd expect.

Although technically derived from protein, PeptiStrong® isn't a dietary protein supplement like whey or casein. You're not taking it for the amino acid content. You're taking it because these specific peptides deliver instructions to your cells that activate anabolic machinery.

The Science

PeptiStrong® works through three synergistic mechanisms:

• Reducing muscle breakdown by suppressing myostatin via Atrogin and MuRF1 pathways
• Increasing muscle synthesis via mTOR and Phospho-S6 activation
• Supporting energy production via increased mitochondrial mass and activity

It's this multi-pathway approach that makes PeptiStrong® different from single-mechanism supplements. You're not just blocking one negative process or stimulating one positive pathway. You're hitting muscle health from multiple angles simultaneously.

Clinical Results

Three human randomized controlled trials back PeptiStrong®'s efficacy at a 2.4g dose:^[1-3]

• 144% increase in strength recovery
• 54% increase in muscle energy
• 47% less muscle fatigue
• 17% increase in strength

In one study published in The Journal of Nutrition, participants supplementing with PeptiStrong® during a period of immobilization and subsequent remobilization recovered strength faster than the control group and showed increased muscle protein synthesis rates during recovery.^[2]

Another study published in Nutrients demonstrated improved strength recovery at both 48 and 72 hours post-exercise, with significantly suppressed plasma myostatin levels, a key marker of reduced muscle breakdown.^[1]

The energy benefits are equally compelling. PeptiStrong®'s ability to increase mitochondrial activity means more ATP production, translating to real-world performance improvements that users can feel.

Positioning and Applications

What makes PeptiStrong® so valuable for formulators is its versatility. It works standalone, but it also works synergistically with traditional protein sources or ingredients like creatine and HMB. In fact, internal in vitro research suggests PeptiStrong® can reduce the amount of protein needed by up to 25% while maintaining the same muscle-building benefits.

This opens up formulation possibilities that weren't available before: protein-forward products with better taste and texture, recovery supplements that don't rely solely on maximum amino acid dosing, and muscle health solutions for consumers who struggle with high protein intake.

PeptiStrong® is FDA GRAS, non-GMO, gluten-free, kosher, and halal. It's neutral-flavored, disperses easily in liquids, and works in formats ranging from RTD shakes and bars to capsules and powders. Brands like GNC's Beyond Raw, Core Nutritionals, and Designs for Health have already successfully brought PeptiStrong® products to market.

For a deeper dive into PeptiStrong®'s mechanisms and research, check out our comprehensive PeptiStrong®: Natural Anabolic Ingredient from Fava Beans article.

PeptiSleep™: Deep Sleep from Brown Rice

If PeptiStrong® showcases what cell-signaling peptides can do for muscle health, PeptiSleep™ demonstrates their potential for addressing one of modern life's most widespread problems: poor sleep quality.

One-third of consumers report not getting enough sleep. Fifty percent say they regularly feel tired during the day. Current solutions like melatonin focus on inducing sleepiness, but they don't address the root causes of fragmented sleep: waking up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep, never reaching deep restorative stages, or waking up groggy.

PeptiSleep™ takes a different approach.

The Cortisol Connection

Derived from brown rice, PeptiSleep™ targets elevated cortisol as a root cause of poor sleep quality. By targeting the orexin receptor, these peptides manage nighttime cortisol, leading to better sleep architecture: more time in deep and REM stages, better sleep quality, longer total sleep duration, and easier awakenings.

Importantly, PeptiSleep™ doesn't affect waking cortisol levels, so users don't experience the "sleep hangover" or grogginess common with other sleep aids.

Clinical Results

A forthcoming human randomized clinical trial at a 250mg dose (taken 30 minutes before bed) showed significant improvements across all phases of sleep:

• 12 more minutes of REM sleep
• 13 more minutes of deep sleep
• 38 more minutes of overall sleep
• 32% higher Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

The Leeds Sleep Evaluation Questionnaire (LSEQ) results were equally impressive, with PeptiSleep™ improving all four domains: ease of getting to sleep, perceived quality of sleep, ease of awakening, and next-day behavior.

In consumer sampling studies with 690 adults, PeptiSleep™ averaged 4.5 out of 5 stars after just one night of use. Users reported falling asleep faster, staying asleep longer, and waking up refreshed without grogginess.

Real-World Applications

Early adopters are already formulating with PeptiSleep™ in innovative ways. Products like Dream Shot (a 2-ounce liquid sleep formula), NutraBio Deep Sleep (combining PeptiSleep™ with dual-phase melatonin), and SLEEPgevity (a practitioner-focused non-sedating formula) show the versatility of this ingredient.

PeptiSleep™ is GRAS (self-affirmed), non-GMO, and derived from brown rice peptides. It works in capsules, tablets, gummies, gels, chews, powders, RTD beverages, and health shots. It also pairs well with other sleep ingredients like L-theanine, magnesium, and glycine.

In a market saturated with melatonin products, PeptiSleep™ offers brands a genuine differentiation point with measurable benefits that show up on sleep tracking wearables.

The Team and Scientific Credibility

Behind Nuritas' technology and ingredients is a world-class team with serious scientific credentials.

• Dr. Nora Khaldi (Founder and CEO) brings her background in mathematics, molecular evolution, and bioinformatics to lead Nuritas' vision of transforming nutrition through AI-discovered peptides.
• Christopher Lindsay (Chief Commercial Officer) has over 30 years of experience in biotech, serving in executive roles for both startups and multinational companies.
• Dr. Andy Franklyn-Miller (Chief Medical and Innovation Officer) is an accomplished physician with a Ph.D., expertise in physiology and machine learning, and over 60 published papers. He oversees software engineering, data science, proteomics, and regulatory functions.
• John Casey (Chief Manufacturing & Supply Chain Officer) brings 30+ years in food and healthcare manufacturing, with unique expertise in protein hydrolysates.

The advisory board includes heavy hitters like Indra Nooyi (former CEO and Chairperson of PepsiCo, now on Amazon's board) and Dr. Will Li (founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation and bestselling author of Eat to Beat Disease).

Nuritas' scientific achievements speak for themselves:

• Hundreds of years of cumulative research experience across the team
• 17 peer-reviewed papers published
• 56 patents issued
• Over 1 billion peptides explored through the AI Magnifier platform

This isn't a fly-by-night supplement startup. This is a serious biotech company backed by investors like Cleveland Avenue, Cultivian Sandbox, and Grupo Nutresa, with the infrastructure and expertise to deliver validated, clinically backed ingredients. There's even investment from Bono and Marc Benioff!

Looking Forward: A Legacy in Every Ingredient

Khaldi has a clear vision for Nuritas' future impact: "Like everyone, I go into stores and you're picking what you're going to eat, drink, use on your skin. The goal really is to be in all of them and to leave a legacy."

The ingredients we consume today -- the proteins, vitamins, and compounds in our food and supplements -- many are 50-100 years old. The people who invented them have long passed, but those ingredients remain embedded in our nutrition forever.

"That's what we want to leave," Khaldi says. "Things that will outlast all of us, embedded in science, that will be part of our everyday consumption, our everyday nutrition. We're really transforming a whole industry, and whatever we work on today will outlast generations."

It's an ambitious vision, but with the AI Magnifier platform and commercialized ingredients like PeptiStrong® and PeptiSleep™ already making market impact, Nuritas is well on its way to making everyday products safer, healthier, and more effective through the power of natural peptides hidden in plants.

Most of us know this by now, but for supplement industry insiders, formulators, and advanced users, Nuritas is a company worth watching closely. The peptide revolution is just beginning, and we'll be covering every step of their journey here on PricePlow.

Stay tuned... we have a lot more Nuritas content coming your way.