DuPont Expands Microbiome Research Program, Adds Second Partnership with Fermentation Specialist

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DuPont Nutrition & Health continues to expand its recently established DuPont Nutrition & Health Microbiome Venture research program, most recently announcing it is now partnering with the Center of Food and Fermentation Technologies based in Estonia to explore new processes for producing “next generation” probiotics. This partnership adds to the strategic activities of the Microbiome Venture, which DuPont established late last year.

When DuPont debuted its Microbiome Venture research initiative in November 2017 in order to focus on microbiome-related research, the company also announced that it had entered into a multiyear partnership with the APC Microbiome Institute (Cork, Ireland). The APC Microbiome Institute is a collaboration between the University College Cork and research institute Cork Institute of Technology. DuPont said that, together with the APC Microbiome Institute, it will be studying maternal and infant microbiomes in order to “develop solutions for establishing a healthy microbiome in early life.”

In a November 2017 press release, DuPont Nutrition & Health Global Technology and Innovation Leader Angela Naef said, “Microbiome science is developing extremely fast, with tremendous opportunity for innovation. With the Microbiome Venture, we intend to build on our probiotics leadership position to develop new microbiome science-based solutions for health and wellness.” Relevant ingredients in DuPont’s portfolio already include probiotics and prebiotics, including human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs).

This week, DuPont announced that the Microbiome Venture has secured a second strategic partnership, this one with the Center of Food and Fermentation Technologies (TFTAK). DuPont said that this partnership will focus on “developing cultivation and bioprocess capabilities for ‘next-generation’ probiotics.”

“The term ‘next generation,’ as defined in this partnership, refers to commensal microbes naturally resident in the gastrointestinal tract and demonstrated to be associated with health and wellness. Such microbes typically have fastidious growth requirements, which must be mastered in order to be able to produce them at scale,” the company stated in a press release.

“TFTAK will support DuPont by defining the optimum conditions required to culture and produce some of our next-generation probiotic strain candidates,” added Microbiome Venture Leader Sebastien Guery, in the press release.