Senomyx Reports Profits Loss of $2.9m as Hit by Decrease in Licence Fee from PepsiCo Tie-Up

Senomyx suffered a $2.8 million fall in license fee revenues from its Sweet Taste Program collaboration with PepsiCo.

John Poyhonene, president and chief executive of Senomyx, said: “Senomyx is starting 2016 well-positioned for continued commercial growth and R&D progress.”

 

“2016 is a pivotal year for Senomyx with the R&D funding period of our Sweet Taste Program collaboration coming to their natural conclusion this summer.”

 

“There continues to be significant interest in the reduction of calories in foods and beverages driven by many factors including the global increase in obesity and diabetes rates and recently issued government dietary guidelines.”

 

“From a research and development perspective, we made meaningful advances in our natural high intensity, zero calories sweetener discovery program last year. Our R&D team has identified multiple novel sweeteners from certain plant sources known to have a sweet taste.”

 

“During the second half of the year, we prioritized our natural sweetener lead candidates and completed our internal evaluations of their performance.  Several of these natural sweetener candidates have met our internal stability and solubility requirements.”

 

“Our next step is further characterization of the taste profile and continued investigation of potential manufacturing scale-up routes. We remain optimistic that we will identify a commercially viable natural high intensity sweetener with competitive advantages to currently available sweeteners, although the discovery and development timeline is uncertain.”