Vitafoods Asia 2024
Psychobiotics pioneer Bened Biomedical targets South East Asia markets with HCP partnerships
The company showcased three of its products sold under the brand Neuralli at Vitafoods Asia held in Bangkok between September 18 and 20.
One of the products, Neuralli MP, first launched three years ago, for instance, is designed to support neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) containing its proprietary strain Lactobacillus plantarum PS128.
The other two products, known as Neuralli Relief and Neuralli Sleep, were launched only this year.
The former claims to support mental outlook and boost outlook and features the heat-treated Lacticaseibacillus paracasei PS23, while the latter is formulated with the heat-treated Limosilactobacillus fermentum PS160 for supporting sleep and neurophysiological responses.
The Taiwan-based company rose to fame in recent years with its probiotic strains that target the gut-brain axis. It was also the winner of Probiotics Product of the Year in NutraIngredients-Asia Awards 2021 with its product Pure Happiness containing PS128.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia at the tradeshow, CEO Frankie Cheng said that the company hopes to expand the South East Asian (SEA) market for these products – especially through partnerships with health care practitioners (HCPs).
Elsewhere in the US and Europe, these products are mostly sold via D2C channels. These are also the two largest markets for the company at the moment.
“We feel that we should carry that success over to SEA. This is also the region area that's closest to our home market, which is Taiwan.
“However, we also noticed that there are huge differences between SEA and America. The biggest difference is that in America, regular consumers would go research and choose products for their own needs.
“But in SEA, they rely on HCPs' recommendation, and this is the primarily reason that we are looking for distributors or partners here to help us market the products,” said Cheng.
He added that psychobiotics was still considered a “very niche” market in SEA and working with the right partners would be critical in reaching out to the masses.
In Asia, the products are also already launched in Japan and South Korea.
“Those are very influential markets, but we believe that at the end of the day, SEA has the most population.”
However, he also acknowledged the price points might be too high for the SEA consumers and this would be an area that the company would look into.
In the US, Neuralli MP is sold at US$165 per bottle of 30 capsules.
The other two products are priced at a lower range of US$60 to US$70 per bottle.
“Based on our research, not a whole lot of products are clinically proven in this space [within the SEA market]. Because our strains are clinically studied, we believe our products are better positioned.”
Psychobiotics for AD in the making
Cheng revealed that the company has been working on a new product for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), with 20 studies in the pipeline.
To date, the company has published 27 clinical studies.
One of the studies published in Food & Function in 2022 reported that individuals who took heat-killed PS23 cells had serum cortisol levels that were significantly decreased as compared to the placebo after an eight week intervention.
The new studies are designed to beef up the product range of Neuralli.
“The upcoming studies will help make the Neuralli brand more complete. We are also developing a product for AD and hopefully sometime next year, we will release the product.
“Our mission is to help people and I believe there are a lot of families suffering from AD” he said.
Social initiatives
The company has also embarked on social initiative programs to help consumers with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AHDH) better integrate into the society.
“Other than producing evidence-based products, we are also launching some social initiatives to help what we call the neuro-divergent people.
“If you think about autism, ADHD kids, a lot of people tend to think of them as a disease, but we don't think so. We believe they are just different, that's why we call these [conditions] ‘neuro-divergent’.
“It's kind of like everybody has different facial features, height, body shape. You are not going to call somebody sick because they look different. We believe neuro is the same way, they are just more sensitive. We don't see it as a disease, and they are just different from the general population,” said Cheng.
The company works with several neuro-inclusive organisations, including KultureCity, Motormorphosis, and Taiwan’s autism support group known as the Kanner Foundation.
Some of the activities include sponsoring children in attending different learning programs, such as marathon.
The company is also working with Harvard Medical School and University of California San Diego (UCSD) in conducting joint clinical studies and research.
“The reason is that having served the market for so long, what we found that, take ADHD as an example, a lot of kids are very smart and work very hard, but they just can't control their own emotions.
“If you call them a disease, it is almost like you put a label on them and it's not fair to these kids…and they will not have the hope to become ‘more normal’. We feel that it’s our mission to support these people,” said Cheng.
