The probiotic technology company said the launch of its latest ingredient will help to take the clinically documented immune health benefits of its BC30 strain into new areas of application where a live probiotic would be inappropriate.
Speaking recently with NutraIngredients, Dr David Keller, VP of scientific operations at Ganeden said Staimune is “a new functional ingredient for companies who are looking to add a functional or value-added proposition to a product where they can’t use a probiotic.”
“There are certain products that you just can’t add a probiotic to,” he noted. “While BC30 is super stable, and you can put it into more products than most probiotics, there are certain products that you just cannot add any probiotic to.”
In particular, Keller said the potential of shelf stable beverages and bakery were a driver in the development of the new ingredient – commenting that it would be great to mirror the rapid growth and interest seen in probiotic ingredients from the refrigerated drinks sector in shelf stable beverages, where traditional probiotics cannot be used.
Speaking to us previously at the Vitafoods show, Mike Bush, president and CEO of Ganeden said the ingredient, which is an inactivated form of the company’s BC30 strain, “can go into virtually any product” including shelf stable beverages and UHT products without any sensory issues.
“The options are virtually unlimited when it comes to that ingredient,” said Bush.
When is a probiotic not a probiotic? … When it’s inactive
Keller noted that several years of development and a lot of money on research has been put into bringing the ingredient to market.
“A number of years ago, we started looking at the cells, whether alive or dead or inactivated, and a number of studies have shown that there are inherent properties of the cell walls, that even when the bacteria is not alive, still has an immune benefit when consumed,” Keller said.
“What we are delivering is these cells, the full cells of BC30, but in an inactivated form,” he said.
Speaking previously, Bush added that the company thought it would be easier to inactivate the probiotic strain that it was – revealing that the resilience of the strain was surprising and that it took ‘some special manipulation’ to produce an inactive version of the cells.
“We’ve got that worked out now and manufacturing is up and running,” said Bush.
Stephen Quinn, international business development & regulatory manager, added that the ingredient will be available internationally: “GanedenBC30 is currently found in 71 countries globally, and since Staimune is an inactivated version of the probiotic strain we’ll be promoting it each of these same countries.”
Product applications
Because the new ingredient is a full but inactive form of the BC30 strain it possesses the cell wall components that have been linked to immune benefits, but can be added to products where cell death, germination or the production of lactic acid would prove a problem, said Keller.
In particular, he said the company wold like to see the rapid growth of probiotics in refrigerated beverages mirrored in shelf-stable drinks. However, a traditional probiotic product would start to germinate and produce lactic acid in something like a shelf-stable beverage, and as such the flavour profile would be altered.
“When you are dealing with a spore-forming bacteria, you really want it to remain in spore form. When they start germinating it can affect the product,” said Keller.
“You either need to put a probiotic in, and claim the probiotic benefits – and for that the cells need to be alive and remain alive. Or you want to go down the route that, it’s not a probiotic, it’s a bacterial-based product – and make claims based off that,” he told us.
Quinnsaid the company has had “a high amount of interest in Asia and the UK, specifically in the shelf stable beverage category, since the refrigerated supply chain in those areas is not as prevalent as it is here in the U.S.”