The company said the patent covers the methods for deriving, isolating and/or extracting amino acid compositions from fenugreek seeds.
The awarded claims include supporting metabolism and the transportation of glucose and carbohydrates into skeletal muscle cells, the company said. It claims that the active ingredients – 4-hydroxisoleucine and other amino acids – have potential benefits including blood glucose level regulation, athletic endurance improvement, lowering cholesterol levels, and weight management.
President of US operations Larry Kolb said: “Promilin and PromilinPro are two of our top selling ingredients and this new patent demonstrates the pre-eminence of our manufacturing processes. These ingredients provide our customers with reliable consistency, tested performance, quality and value with absolute safety that can be added to their product formulations.”
TSI said it is sponsoring further clinical studies to better understand and validate its claims about glucose transport and glycogen re-synthesis, weight management, and glucose metabolism in healthy subjects as well as people with impaired glucose tolerance.
Israeli company Frutarom also offers a patented fenugreek-based ingredient, marketed as FenuLife for satiety and weight management.
Product manager of Frutarom’s LifeLine food extracts and functional foods division David Hart said that Fructarom’s product is mainly composed of the soluble fiber galactomannan, as opposed to amino acids.
He told NutraIngredients-USA.com: “It is not surprising that there may be other phytonutrients in fenugreek that may have health benefits.”
Hart added: “I doubt that this patent will have any effect on FenuLife.”
Fenugreek is an herb native to south eastern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia but is grown in many parts of the world.
TSI specializes in botanical, marine and natural product extracts, as well as synthesized compounds such as Promilin.