The company’s Bifidobacterium breve M-16V won the Ingredient of the Year award in the Infant Nutrition category at the second NutraIngredients-Asia awards held in Singapore.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia at Vitafoods Asia, the company’s general manager in the R&D division, Dr. Fumiaki Abe said the probiotic strain was backed by more than 50 clinical studies.
Fumiaki said, “We first launched M-16V in 1980 in the Japan market.”
Currently, the company is using M-16V in its infant formula for the international market, but it is also selling supplements with the strain.
“Morinaga Milk Industry also has a B2B business, and we sell our M-16V powder as a probiotic ingredient internationally,” Fumiaki added.
He shared that hospitals were also using the strain: “More than 120 hospitals are using M-16V for infant health in premature babies.”
M-16V is a probiotic strain demonstrated to promote healthy gut microbial colonisation, and aimed at especially protecting premature infants against devastating diseases such as necrotising enterocolitis and sepsis.
Apart from M-16V, they have other probiotic strains including bifidobacterium longum BB536, bifidobacterium infantis M-63, which have shown not only beneficial effects on infants, but also in adults.
Fumiaki said they are developing more products with these probiotic strains for the international market.
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