OmniActive's Vegetarian Beadletting Wins EU Patent

SHORT HILLS, N.J.—OmniActive Health Technologies has been awarded a patent in the European Union for its novel vegetarian beadletting technology for dry delivery forms of lipophilic nutrients. The technology, which was granted a patent by the Indian Patent Office last year, enables the seamless incorporation of various unstable, oily or lipophilic ingredients—such as lutein, other carotenoids, essential fatty acids, fat-soluble vitamins, phytosterols, and lecithin—into dry tablets and capsules, without using any animal-derived ingredients such as gelatin, lactose or casein.

According to Abhijit Bhattacharya, chief operating officer of OmniActive, the OmniBead™ technology requires a lower percentage of inactive ingredients than conventional technologies, making more space available in the beadlet for the actives. "The novel beadlet design facilitates the highest known payloads of active ingredients in the industry," he said. "The innovative technology allowed the company to introduce 25 percent lutein beadlets and 20 percent lutein esters beadlets over three years ago—a difficult feat to accomplish with traditional technologies."

The vegetarian beadlets, which are also free of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and allergens, are a very small, spherical particle size, typically within the 400 micron range. This size makes them extremely well-suited for withstanding high forces of tablet compression, without causing the leaching or bleeding of actives into the tablet matrix that is common with conventional technologies. A wide range of products, all laboratory-validated to have a minimum shelf life of two years, have already been launched using OmniBead™ technology.