Burcon Announces Technology Breakthrough - Introduces New CLARISOY - Soy Protein Isolate

CLARISOY is 100% soluble and transparent in acidic solutions, enabling applications down to pH 2.5. CLARISOY also has exceptional flavour characteristics and is heat stable permitting hot fill applications.

05/11/08 Burcon NutraScience Corporation announces that it has developed a revolutionary soy protein isolate. Burcon has branded this new soy protein isolate as CLARISOY.

CLARISOY is 100% soluble and transparent in acidic solutions, enabling applications down to pH 2.5. CLARISOY also has exceptional flavour characteristics and is heat stable permitting hot fill applications. Burcon's CLARISOY shows great promise for use in a variety of healthy and great tasting food and beverage applications and is expected to be price competitive as well which should be of great interest to food and beverage manufacturers currently dealing with high dairy protein prices.

Plant proteins represent an inexpensive and environmentally sound source of functional and nutritious food ingredients. Plant proteins have long been used as an indirect source of protein for humans through their use as a feed ingredient for cattle, pigs and chickens. Plant proteins can be grown, isolated and purified, converting them to high value food ingredients for human consumption at a fraction of the environmental and economic cost of animal proteins.

"For the past ten years, Burcon has focused its efforts on developing the world's first commercial canola proteins, Puratein and Supertein. The announcement demonstrates Burcon's ability to leverage our talented team of scientists and engineers to exploit a second major opportunity. That opportunity is the existing multi-billion dollar global soy protein market," said Johann F. Tergesen, Burcon's President and C.O.O. adding, "Our new CLARISOY soy protein isolate product and the associated extraction technology offer another major platform for Burcon to earn revenue and to pursue future opportunities."

Burcon also announces that it has filed patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to protect its newly developed novel processes for the production of plant proteins including acid soluble soy protein isolates, as well as to protect CLARISOY, the product derived there from, and to protect the functional and nutritional applications of CLARISOY as an ingredient in foods and beverages. Consistent with Burcon's previous patents and patent applications, Burcon will also file for protection internationally under the patent cooperation treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization to protect these new inventions. As at the date of this announcement, Burcon now has 68 issued patents worldwide, and well in excess of 200 additional patent applications, including 8 issued U.S. patents and 48 U.S. patent applications.