Three months after its formation, the DuPont Nutrition & Health Microbiome Venture has entered its second strategic research and development partnership. The newly forged relationship with the Center of Food and Fermentation Technologies (TFTAK) in Tallinn, Estonia, will focus on developing cultivation and bioprocess capabilities for “next-generation” probiotics.
 
Last November, DuPont Nutrition & Health (DuPont) announced the creation of its Microbiome Venture to spearhead development of new microbiome science-based solutions. Since then, the Microbiome Venture has already taken significant steps in contributing to DuPont’s business growth strategy.
 
The research and development partnership with TFTAK focuses on cultivation and bioprocess development 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.
 
“We are delighted to be partnering with TFTAK,” said Microbiome Venture Leader Sebastien Guery. “With its excellent capabilities in bioprocess technology and systems biology, TFTAK will support DuPont by defining the optimum conditions required to culture and produce some of our next-generation probiotic strain candidates.”
 
DuPont established the Microbiome Venture to accelerate microbiome science-based solution development through a combination of selected strategic partnerships with microbiome science leaders and internal investments.
 
“Our DuPont Nutrition & Health Microbiome Venture partnership will build on our long-term successful cooperation on the development and optimization of production processes for novel bacteria of interest to the dairy industry and potentially to nutrition, health and wellness companies more widely,” said professor Raivo Vilu of TFTAK. “We are looking forward to an exciting next step in our cooperation.”
 
The Microbiome Venture is a focused entrepreneurial team with a strong connection to the larger DuPont organization, tapping into capabilities including R&D, manufacturing, regulatory, legal and marketing. The Microbiome Venture investment will complement DuPont’s existing product portfolio, especially in the areas of probiotics and prebiotics, including human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs.)