BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc. and the protein discovery company Shiru are partnering to develop and commercialize sweet proteins for use in beverages and specialty products. This partnership combines unparalleled strengths from both entities to bring natural, functional ingredients to market: Shiru’s powerful AI-driven discovery capabilities and AHN’s deep expertise in fermentation.
The partnership is the first foray by the leader in amino acids, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition, to test sweet proteins – long considered a holy grail application for the food industry.
Sweet proteins can replace sugar and other sweeteners in food and beverages without spiking blood sugar levels associated with diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease globally. A handful of known sweet proteins derived from fruits and berries grow near the equator. These known sweet proteins show tremendous early promise and face challenges related to onset/lingering taste effects and stability. To overcome these challenges, Shiru will use Flourish™, its AI-driven discovery platform, to uncover additional natural, food-safe proteins not previously known to be sweet.
Sweet proteins are a promising, potentially more sustainable alternative to HFCS and sugar production and are an appealing sugar replacement in food and beverage product development. Remarkably, sweet proteins can deliver up to 5,000 times more sweetness than sugar, offering the potential to replace 70-90% of sweetness provided by sugar in food and beverage products.
Unlike sugar, sweet proteins do not cause blood sugar levels to spike because the body metabolizes them differently. When you eat sugar, your body metabolizes it into glucose and fructose, which triggers your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin helps glucose enter cells to be used for energy. By contrast, sweet proteins do not trigger insulin release, which may help manage blood sugar and diabetes. Sweet proteins are digested like any other dietary protein, the large-molecule building blocks of our bodies. Because of this, they are not harmful to the gut microbiome.
Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s existing portfolio of sweetener ingredients has a tremendous position in the market, and a customer base that includes the world's biggest food and beverage companies. In addition to its sweetener portfolio in the food and beverage sectors, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition also has leading fermentation-produced products across other flavor applications, including biopharmaceutical, sports and wellness nutrition, animal nutrition, nutraceutical, specialty and personal care, regenerative medicine, and medical food industries.
“Our partnership with Shiru is one of many examples of our approach to innovation,” said Ryan Smith, Chief Growth Officer and Executive Vice President at Ajinomoto Health and Nutrition. “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. As collective industry leaders, we believe this partnership will position both of us to be on the cutting-edge of what’s 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.”
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership.
ProteinDiscovery.ai: The “Amazon for proteins”
The partnership marks Shiru’s entrance into the sweet proteins category as it continues to expand its portfolio of novel, functional protein solutions. Shiru maintains the world’s largest database of natural proteins from plants and microbes and a uniquely trained AI engine, Flourish™, for proteins for bio-industrial applications including food, ProteinDiscovery.ai. This platform allows corporate partners to rapidly identify and test highly functional proteins found in nature, slashing R&D and product development costs and accelerating time to market.
ProteinDiscovery.ai is the “Amazon for proteins” – a marketplace to search, discover, pilot, and buy molecules for food, agriculture, personal care, and advanced material applications. The searchable database catalogs more than 33 million molecules by sequence, functional use, and successful expression.
Shiru has already forged partnerships with global multinationals including Puratos and Griffith Foods via its CVC fund, Nourish Ventures, to discover, pilot, and scale sustainable food ingredients. Other ingredients in Shiru’s ingredient portfolio include OleoPro™, a high-performance, structured fat that replaces saturated animal fat and unsustainable tropical oils including palm, coconut oil, and cocoa butter in food and personal care, which just received a patent from the USPTO, and uPro™, the active protein ingredient in OleoPro™.
"Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition conducted a tremendous amount of due diligence and determined that partnering with Shiru provides them access to a landscape of protein solutions that is truly differentiated and represents the fastest way to discover and develop commercially valuable sweet proteins across their product lines," said Shiru Founder and CEO Dr. Jasmin Hume. “At Shiru we share Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s vision of eating well and living well. Together our companies are now using artificial intelligence to supercharge this mission, which we are very excited for. We are already identifying high-value, natural, scalable proteins for Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s brands which we know will positively impact human and planetary health alike.”
About Shiru, Inc.
Shiru, The Protein Discovery Company, is accelerating the limitless possibility of protein through AI-powered discovery and high-performance, sustainable products. Shiru’s disruptive approach, powered by its patented Flourish™ technology, cuts discovery costs and speeds up scaleup success, quickly pinpointing high-performing and scalable natural proteins on drastically accelerated timelines. Its namesake partnerships platform, Shiru.com, offers patented, ready-to-scale protein solutions. Its technology platform, ProteinDiscovery.ai, offers an interactive marketplace and discovery suite in a first-of-its-kind, open-access catalog featuring over 33 million molecules for applications across food, personal care, agriculture, and advanced materials. Shiru is led by a seasoned team of technologists and industry veterans and is based in Berkeley, California. Shiru is backed by leading venture capital firms, including S2G Ventures, Nourish Ventures, and CPT Capital. For more information, visit http://www.shiru.com and ProteinDiscovery.ai.
About Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc.
Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ajinomoto Co., Inc., a global leader in the research, development, manufacture and sale of amino acid-based products for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, sports nutrition, health and beauty industries, as well as food ingredients. The company opened its first American office in New York in 1917 and has since grown and expanded its presence, establishing offices and production facilities in North Carolina, Iowa and Illinois. Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc. leverages an international manufacturing, supply and distribution chain to bring the highest-grade products to customers. For additional information on Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc., please visit http://www.ajihealthandnutrition.com.
