Prebiotic solutions across women's health and life stages: an interview with Kaneka Probiotics

Live from SupplySide Global 2025, Nutritional Outlook Associate Editor Erin McEvoy asks Jordi Riera, chief business development manager at Kaneka Probiotics about the importance of women's health, additional areas of focus, and formats in Kaneka's prebiotic portfolio.

Transcript

Erin McEvoy: Hi everyone. I'm here with Jordi at Kaneka, and we're going to talk about probiotics. So why is women's health across life stages such an important category for innovation?

Jordi Riera: Well, at Kaneka, we have made a very strong belief on women's health because we believe that on one hand, woman across the life stages that women transition to, there are several aspects that probiotics can contribute to a better health. In particular, recently, we've developed two very important products for us. One is the world’s first menopause probiotic, where we're capable to modulate the estrogens with the use of a precision probiotic. And another one is our L. gasseri KABP-064 which is one of the few strains that have been able to colonize after oral use.

McEvoy: What are some areas Kaneka believes deserve more attention and are actively investigating?

Riera: So we're still investing very actively in the woman's health space. Infant space is also an area that we've been very strong for a long time, and we continue investing. And then healthy aging, people want to live longer, want to live a better quality of life, and that touches different aspects, from gastrointestinal to immune from gut-brain axis to metabolic health, and we're trying to cover that with our technology.

McEvoy: So your portfolio includes strains for women's health, from vaginal balance to menopause support and urinary tract health. What has clinical science revealed about probiotic strains for women's health?

Riera: So for a long time in women's health, we've seen those that haven't been developed specifically for that population group and also not specifically for the different benefits that we want to tackle. We had to do two steps back to be able to deliver better products, investigating what strains are, for instance, capable to colonize the vagina after all years, just to make sure that we deliver the right product at the right spot. And then thinking about the benefits, strains that can do mechanisms such as modulating the hormones, which is the way we can deliver a better impact on the on the on the consumer.

McEvoy: Nice. And then, could you tell us more about the formats for probiotic strains in your portfolio?

Riera: So everybody that thinks about the probiotic typically thinks about the capsule and the powder in a capsule. We're still focused on that. That's a great way to deliver quality products, but we're exploring sideways. For instance, we've been very advanced in developing liquid probiotics, liquid not with water, because probiotics typically don't do well with water, but with other compositions, like oil, all types of oil that can be attractive for the consumer and more convenient. And then thinking about convenience, we were also thinking about other delivery formats that we're working on like gummies, like sticks, fast melts, all these things that we develop with our products, but always trying to keep the quality at the center.

McEvoy: All right. Thank you.