Cognis licenses active ingredient for weight management

Scientists at IMD, using IMD’s advanced discovery platform, discovered the unique natural product and qualified its promising weight reducing properties through preclinical in vivo studies in several obesity models.

15/10/08 Cognis, a worldwide supplier of innovative specialty chemicals and nutritional ingredients, has exclusively licensed an anti-obesity product candidate from InterMed Discovery’s advanced discovery pipeline of functional food ingredients. This transaction is the first to follow the cooperation agreement signed by the two companies in March this year.

Scientists at IMD, using IMD’s advanced discovery platform, discovered the unique natural product and qualified its promising weight reducing properties through preclinical in vivo studies in several obesity models. As this ingredient has already shown initial safety and efficacy in animal studies, Cognis will now be able to set up first human studies very rapidly. This will allow to shorten the time-to-market significantly.

Norbert Weitkemper, Director of Strategic Business Development Nutrition & Health at Cognis commented: “Obesity has become a major challenge in the developed world where gradual weight gain is the norm for almost everybody.  For that reason, we believe that active ingredients promoting weight management through functional food have a unique selling potential in the consumer market. By licensing this active ingredient from our partner InterMed Discovery, we are strengthening our product portfolio in this important growth market. Further ingredients from IMD matching our customers’ market demands are still in the exploration phase.”

“We are delighted to have achieved this first milestone in our cooperation  with Cognis  within such a short period of time. It is a sign of the enormous potential of IMD’s natural product pipeline that we can license a first proprietary development product candidate so soon. Such successes bode well for the future.” said Bernard Becker, Managing Director of InterMed Discovery.

Under the terms of a licensing agreement, Cognis is now taking over the lead to develop the product candidate and will be responsible for marketing any products resulting from this process. In return, InterMed Discovery will receive an upfront payment and royalties for this innovative molecule.

Prior this year both companies announced a strategic cooperation giving Cognis access to InterMed Discovery’s world’s largest natural product data base and an exclusive access to selected potential active ingredients for specific applications in functional foods, dietary supplements as well as personal and home care products.