The startup of the University of Alicante, Bioithas and Aceitunas LA ESPAÑOLA from Alcoy, through the family office of the Alberola brothers, invest together in the development of a patent based on two bacteria from beer bagasse and olive fermentation.
With this union, which brings together 15 years of research, and having identified the benefits of these bacteria in previous studies, Bioithas and La Española are combining their skills to develop and patent a probiotic product that will be applied mainly to combat obesity.
“The teams are very excited about the previous results obtained. We want to bioproduce this development on an industrial scale and make it available to reference laboratories in different countries, so that they can be the vehicle to the consumer, so that we can accelerate the commercialisation of the patent worldwide,’ they add.
The alliance of these two firms is born with the commercial horizon that the Metabolic Syndrome, associated with Obesity, is considered the ‘pandemic’ of the 21st century, the current eating habits and sedentary lifestyle mean that the percentage of obese people in the world is skyrocketing in recent years.
By 2030, the percentage of obese people in the United States will reach almost 50% of the population, and in Spain it will exceed 20%, making probiotics an excellent opportunity for the food and pharmaceutical industry. In the United States and Asia, the marketing of probiotic foods and products is growing rapidly.
Both companies come to this union with their respective research at a very advanced stage. In the case of La Española, the research has been based on the results obtained from the fermentation of olives and brine, and in the case of Bioithas, on the residues obtained from beer.
Now, the project, that of combining the research on the two strains obtained, will be transferred to hospitals in the Valencia Region and will be tested on 140 patients with obesity. The challenge is that the results will be available by the end of 2025 and can be consolidated in a patent and marketed through large pharmaceutical laboratories. For the moment, the research of both companies for this last phase, starts with an investment of 500,000 euros.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
