Redpoint Bio and IFF sign deal for Reb-C sweetness enhancer
The biotech firm announced a year ago that it had identified a new sweetness enhancer from a natural source, which it dubbed RP44. This was later revealed to be Reb-C, a steviol glycoside from the stevia plant and a by-product of Reb-A production, which has been attracting considerable interest as a zero calorie sweetener.
Reb-A has “not proved to be a plug in and play sweetener”, Ray Salemme, CEO of Redpoint Bio told FoodNavigator-USA.com, as considerable work has been required on its sweetness profile.
Unlike Reb-A, however, Reb-C is not a sweetener in its own right, but a sweetness enhancer.
Salemme said there have been very good results with Reb C in combination with nutritive sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup and sucrose, bringing a 20 to 25 per cent reduction of calories with good preservation of taste.
The kinds of products it could be used in include every day foods that have a lot of sugar, including kids’ favourites like pop tarts and sweet breakfast cereals. Given the emphasis towards healthier eating and combating childhood obesity, he said: “The public health impact of that could be huge. I wouldn’t mind being associated with that.”
Reb-C has also been trialled in combination with Reb-A and some artificial sweeteners like aspartame, ace-k and sucralose.
Having identified the compound, Redpoint’s aim has been to find a partner to bring Reb C to market as quickly as possible, and up to this point its approach has been “to approach everyone on the chain to see who might be interested in licensing the technology”.
With IFF it has done a deal with “an international powerhouse that can push the ball downstream very quickly,” and to which it now hands over development and financial responsibility.
Redpoint receives an upfront payment of $0.5m, and will receive an additional $1m when certain regulatory and supply milestones are met, as well as royalties based on how much Reb C IFF uses.
Salemme said: “Since Reb C is a by-product of Reb-A production, and Reb-A is scaling, we believe there is quire a bit of Reb-C around but it will have to be refined from its current state.”
Any supply deal would be struck with IFF and not with Redpoint.
As for regulatory approval, a WHO JECFA standard already exists on any mixture of steviol glycosides with a combined purity greater than 95 per cent. “Presumably this would include preparations including Reb-C”.
In the US, GRAS status has been obtained by some products that are not such highly purified fractions – although they are not yet as relaxes as the JECFA standard.
Salemme expects that Fema GRAS could be an appropriate approach for Reb-C.
Cell assay trouble
Redpoint previously had a license deal with anther major flavour house, Givaudan, but this deal ended abruptly in April 2009. Salemme said this was not for Reb C, but for a synthetic cell-based assay system for finding compounds that could enhance sweetness and block bitter notes.
Since Reb-A gained FDA GRAS, the marketplace has shifted significantly.
“The enthusiasm of end users [food manufacturers] for synthetic compounds changed dramatically. There is a clear, unmistakable trend towards all-natural. We had to re-engineer how we thought about discovering natural compounds,” said Salemme.
Cell-based assays are not ideal for natural products because it is prohibitively expensive to isolate every compound to test it. This means testing takes place using mixtures, which then have to be disassembled when an effect is observed.
“You get many false positives,” he said.
