DSM Food Specialties is launching a three-pronged attack on metabolic syndrome with new ingredients tackling type 2 diabetes and heart disease to complement its weight management ingredient Fabuless.
At the core of this nutritional onslaught is InsuVital, a new patented proprietary dairy peptide mix that can effectively reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and lower the negative effects for people already suffering from it - a major breakthrough in the functional ingredients market, said research and development (R&D) director Bob Poldermans.
Speaking exclusively to FIHN at the company's headquarters in Delft, the Netherlands, Poldermans said: "When we elucidated the DNA sequence of Aspergillus niger (one of the firm's primary raw materials) we obtained a lot of information about the different proteases in it (enzymes that break up proteins).
"They all hydrolyse protein at different locations and we can make very specific protein hydrolysates and all kinds of peptides which, depending on their structure, have different functionalities.
"One of the protein hydrolysates turned out to have a significant impact on insulin response."
Head of nutritional science, Dr Philip Rijken, said the product would be launched in the autumn. "The astonishing thing is that it's possible to induce insulin production to levels that are normal for healthy people, even in subjects in the late stages of type 2 diabetes. It partially restores impaired insulin function."
This increased insulin response stimulates the disposal of glucose out of the blood into target tissues and lowers glucose peaks after food intake, he said.
The company has already conducted several human intervention studies and was currently preparing a longer term study, said Rijken. "This is a huge opportunity. 300M people will have type 2 diabetes by 2025; we're sitting on a time bomb here."
The second prong of the attack was a range of ingredients targeting high blood pressure and cholesterol, he said. However, details were being kept strictly under wraps.
DSM Food Specialties spends 8% of sales on R&D, of which 40% was in "high risk, high reward" projects, said Poldermans.
"You might have to wait for five to seven years before something comes to market, but that's the price you pay."
R&D activities were focused on two areas: new nutritional ingredients and processing aids.
An increasing proportion of the R&D budget was also being spent on "open innovation" as the company looked outside its four walls to share ideas and technologies and entered into collaborations to ensure that the best ideas go to market more quickly through pooling science, talents and resources, he said.