PanTheryx recently expanded its formulation capabilities to include colostrum plus probiotic combination products for adult and children’s dietary supplements.
The integrative digestive and immune health company said the new formulation capability provides manufacturers with the ability to create combination products with colostrum and efficacious probiotics, like Bifidobacterium animalis BB-12, Lactobacillus rhamnosus LGG‡, Lactobacillus plantarum HEAL9, Lactobacillus paracasei 8700:2 and B subtilis DE111 strains.
R&D
Mike Weiser, PhD, senior director of innovation and R&D, PanTheryx, told NutraIngredients-USA that the team worked diligently over the past year to explore ways to create colostrum and probiotic formulations.
“It’s well known that live probiotics can be very fragile. They are sensitive to heat and moisture, so it’s often difficult to formulate products, especially combo products because of these sensitivities. We spent the better part of a year working with several top probiotic manufacturers in the industry to innovate ways to make novel combo products with probiotics. For our consumer-facing brand, TruBiotics, we developed combinations of vitamin D and vitamin C with a spore probiotic, which is a very stable probiotic, in a gummy format for kids and adults. However, one of the more challenging innovations was combining the more fragile live probiotics like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium with bovine (cow) colostrum. We are thrilled to be able to offer these combo products for dietary supplement manufacturers and are excited about the possibilities for new digestive and immune health supplements.”
Weiser added that the team paired clinically-validated probiotic strains with their clinically-proven colostrum. Currently, Pantheryx is running stability trials to prove the viability of the probiotic strains with colostrum over time. He said so far they have over 9 months of established stability and will continue the study out to 24 months.
Synbiotic combination
Weiser explained that studies have shown that the immunoglobulins and immune factors in colostrum improve the intestinal environment and can promote the colonization and adhesion of the strains within the intestine. There are also oligosaccharides in colostrum that have been shown to promote and facilitate the growth of several different probiotics species by acting as a prebiotic.
“There is a synergistic relationship between probiotics and colostrum. When you combine the two most clinically studied types of good bacteria—Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus—as well as Bacillus spores with cow colostrum’s prebiotic function as a food source for probiotics, the body’s digestive and immune systems should be able to function at as high a level as intended,” said Michael Roizen, MD, chief wellness officer emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic and PanTheryx medical advisory board member.
Manufacturing
PanTheryx manages every stage of its colostrum production—starting at colostrum collection through processing in its vertically-integrated facilities. Its facilities feature an in-house clinical laboratory with accredited third-party validation. The company specializes in spray drying, dry blending, powder fills, sachets, capsules and chewable tablets.
According to Weiser, the combination product possibilities span different life stages and can be designed for digestive and immune health.
“For the live strain combinations with colostrum, the ideal product format is a dietary supplement in a capsule format or a sachet due to the sensitivities of the live probiotics. In the case of spore probiotics, we developed a combination with colostrum that can work well in other formats like a soft chew or a freeze-dried yogurt drop,” noted Weiser.
Effectively marketing to the consumer
Dr. Roizen added that he looks forward to seeing new probiotic combination products that leverage the latest digestive health research to deliver new options for consumers.
But getting that message to consumers is often half the battle. Weiser noted that one key challenge is colostrum awareness. “New parents and women who are breastfeeding are familiar with colostrum as the ‘liquid gold’ human milk they produce for their infants. After this time, the awareness of colostrum usually trails off because families don’t realize colostrum from cows can be incorporated into their diets through nutritional supplements and fortified foods and beverages."
To counter this, Weiser said the company is highlighting the combination as a way to boost microbiome diversity and health and emphasizing colostrum’s prebiotic function in their messaging.
