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Technology Insight Report – Probiotics

Summary of Report

This report takes a look into the patenting activity around probiotics uncovering the companies, inventors, intellectual property trends and other key indicators. Probiotics are live microorganisms thought to be beneficial to the host organism.

This report graphically analyzes probiotics markets from many perspectives, categorizes and highlights the key companies involved, defines unique keywords. This report also covers the global probiotics marketplace. It focuses particularly on the markets and opportunities for probiotics in medical applications, formulations, processing technologies, and various microbes. The study considers future opportunities for new application markets.

This report was prepared by mining patent data using Patent iNSIGHT Pro, a comprehensive patent analysis platform that helps one accelerate time-to-decision from patent analysis activities.

Overview

Probiotics are live microorganisms thought to be beneficial to the host organism. According to the currently adopted definition by FAO/WHO, probiotics are: “Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and bifidobacteria are the most common types of microbes used as probiotics; but certain yeasts and bacilli may also be helpful. Probiotics are commonly consumed as part of fermented foods with specially added active live cultures; such as in yogurt, soy yogurt, or as dietary supplements. This report takes a look into the patenting activity around probiotics uncovering the inventors, patents, the companies and the intellectual property history behind these microbes.

Introduction to Probiotics

Probiotics are being used and consumed for decades in various forms of fermented and cultured foods and drinks – such as yogurt, kefir, cheese, sauerkraut and pickles. Elie Metchnikoff, the Russian physiologist is credited for discovering the benefits of probiotics. However, today, with the over-processing of modern day foods and beverages, fragile probiotics organisms are not as abundant in today’s diet as they once were. This, combined with the increasing amount of stress, including dieting, traveling, and overuse of antibiotics and other pharmaceutical drugs, has created a deficiency of these beneficial bacteria in a majority of the population. In order to protect itself from undesirable organisms, the human body has to maintain a proper balance of microflora throughout the bacterial ecosystem of the intestinal tract. Daily consumption of probiotic foods ensures that proper amounts of “friendly” bacteria are ingested by the human body.