Stephen O’Hara, CEO of OptiBiotix, commented: “The last few months have seen substantial progress in reducing the technical risks associated with this exciting programme designed to create low calorie, sweet oligosaccharides, which could be used to reduce chronic lifestyle disease such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes. If successful, this work creates the opportunity to replace ‘unhealthy’ sugars in many food products with oligosaccharides which can improve health, and herald a new paradigm in the food industry. We are particularly pleased that international commercial partners have recognised the opportunity presented by this work and are including their own strains in the final stages of this development programme.”
OptiBiotix Health plc (AIM: OPTI), has signed an agreement with the Instituto de Química Orgánica General of the Spanish National Research Council based in Madrid. The IQOG is an international renowned centre in the synthesis, analysis, and the study of the biological behaviour of organic compounds in humans.
This agreement will enable OptiBiotix to progress its pipeline of novel oligosaccharides (carbohydrates that consists of a small number of sugars) identified by its OptBiotic(R) technology platform to testing in human studies.
The oligosaccharides have been selected on the basis of the novelty, levels of production, and their potential to manipulate the human microbiome. This supports the focus on OptiBiotix’s target market areas in metabolic health, including applications in managing high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes. The work on scale up, purification, and testing will include strains from international commercial partners subject to finalisation of commercial terms.
The agreement with IQOG contracts them to:-
— Scale up the pipeline of novel oligosaccharides identified by the OptiBiotic(R) technology platform
-- Purify the novel oligosaccharides to the desired level (>85%) for laboratory testing -- Analyse the oligosaccharides for their organoleptic (taste, texture, aftertaste) properties -- Assess the oligosaccharides for their microbiome modulating properties
This work is the final stage of the laboratory programme to identify calorie-free oligosaccharides with the potential to selectively enhance the growth rate of specific microbial strains and species to modulate the human microbiome to prevent, manage, and treat disease. Oligosaccharides showing commercial potential will commence human studies in 2016.
