Mandana Pahlavani, PhD, an assistant professor from Texas Woman’s Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, received a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to study the “novel microencapsulation of red wine pomace to modulate gut health in coronary artery disease.”

Pahlavani, who is the project director collaborating with colleagues from Texas Tech and Texas A&M, made the focus of the study increasing the bioavailability of polyphenols obtained from the red wine pomace. Grape pomace is the leftover waste after grapes are pressed to make juice or wine. This could be the skins, seeds, stems and pulp from a grape. Red wine pomace is the pomace after the grapes have been fermented.