Shiru partners with Ajinomoto to develop ‘step-change solutions’ for sweet proteins

"What we are announcing is really a collaboration between Shiru and Ajinomoto, where we are using the best capabilities of both companies to discover — which is our strength — and then later produce — which is their strength — novel and natural protein-based sweeteners. They have a tremendous history in bringing really transformative ingredients to market and already have very massively scaled portfolios of ingredients,” Hume said.  

Ajinomoto seeks to expand functional ingredient portfolio  ​

Shiru will bring to the partnership its ingredient discovery engine, Flourish, which identifies "amino acid sequences that make up proteins and connect them with their functional attribute,” and Ajinomoto will bring its biotech know-how, Hume explained. This partnership will allow Ajinomoto to expand its sweetener and functional ingredients portfolios.  

Flourish provides food ingredient companies with insight on a protein’s flavor, texture and other factors, which can determine how Ajinomoto scales its sweet protein production, Hume said. Last year, Griffith Foods released​ a plant-based protein fat replacer called OleoPro with the help of Shiru's technology.

“We believe in working with partners and solutions that uniquely complement our century plus of expertise in the ingredient space, our expansive portfolio of products for improving nutrition, and our dedicated and talented team around the globe,” said Ryan Smith, chief growth officer and executive VP at Ajinomoto Health and Nutrition, in a press release.

He added, “We believe this partnership will position both of us to be on the cutting-edge of what is next in functional ingredients, specifically in protein, an increasing category of interest for consumers. This partnership, and our balanced strengths, will allow us to identify natural proteins for use as sweeteners across numerous applications to meet the changing demands of the food industry and what consumers expect.”

Developing new natural ingredient portfolios: ‘We can do it in a matter of months’

Earlier this year, Shiru launched a new business model — shifting to an as-a-service model — and a new website, ProteinDiscovery.ai​, which provides a limited demo of Flourish’s capabilities, Hume shared.

Website visitors can search for proteins with specific functions and structures and see what protein expression will be produced based on various production inputs. With a paid subscription, users can gain further access to Shiru’s database of more than 33 million natural protein expressions.

Shiru’s technology is designed to cut “down massively on R&D cycles” by allowing food ingredient companies to search a wide swath of ingredients for specific properties in a short time, Hume noted.

“We are able to come up with entire new portfolios of natural ingredients in a fraction of the amount of time that it would take a more established or larger ingredients company, meaning that we can do this with a very lean team, leaning into the digital tools and the high throughput screening tools that we have,” Hume said.

She added, “It might take a ... whole team of research scientists several years [and] tens of millions of dollars to come up with something that is maybe incrementally better than the previous version, whereas we are really looking for step-change solutions in terms of the ingredients that we are developing, and we can do it in a matter of months.”

Unlocking the potential of sweet proteins as a feasible sweetener solution

Sweet proteins — largely brazzein-based — have emerged as an alternative to sweeteners like sugar, stevia, monk fruit and others. This year, Sweegen released its brazzein-based flavor modulator portfolio, Sweetensify, and biotech company Oobli received a “no-question” letter​ from the FDA for its expression of brazzein-53.

Sweet proteins are a compelling ingredient because "they can be very high potency," allowing food and beverage companies to use a small amount to produce a high level of sweetness, up to 5,000 times sweeter than sugar, Hume explained.

Additionally, sweet proteins do not cause a spike in blood sugar levels because sweet proteins are digested like other dietary proteins and do not release insulin, unlike how sugar is digested, the company shared in a press release.

The food and beverage industry needs to invest in the infrastructure to make sweet proteins a more readily available sweetener — which requires biotechnology and fermentation capacity — Hume explained.

“There are about a dozen known sweet proteins out there, mostly coming from fruits and berries, and that is not a huge number. In the world of natural proteins, there are literally billions of proteins out there that come from already food-safe sources, so that can be plants, it can be fungal sources, algae [or] microbes. But if you do not have the right tools to be able to go find a broader portfolio or set of those proteins, [then you] are limited by what has been cataloged already,” Hume said.

The future of food ‘cannot be solely venture-backed’

Moving forward, Shiru will be searching for other ingredient company partnerships through this new business model, Hume said.  

“The effort of launching a new business model and allowing companies to really engage with our discovery platform certainly has been a huge accelerant for us commercially where we look forward to a point where we are solely relying on revenues, as opposed to where we have been in the past of being solely venture focused — that is where the whole industry has to go,” she elaborated.  

She added, “[In] transitioning the food industry to be better, healthier [and] more sustainable, it cannot be solely venture-backed — there has to be engagement from large corporates. Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that many robust ingredients solutions are going to be brought to an industrial global scale without active involvement by the massive ingredients companies that are out there.”