Supported by Enterprise Ireland, the new CoreNhanced Biotechnology Limited site in Cork will be a permanent European base for science, innovation and customer collaboration.
“Ireland has become one of the world’s leading centers for food science, biotechnology, and innovation,” said Denis Neville, founder and CEO of CoreFX. “By combining the scientific excellence of Teagasc Moorepark with Enterprise Ireland’s vision and support, we are creating an innovation platform that will accelerate how breakthrough nutritional technologies move from research into commercial reality for customers across Europe and beyond.”
Teagasc Moorepark is one of Europe’s leading food research and innovation centers collaborating with industry partners to advance research, accelerate innovation, and support the commercialization of new food and nutrition technology.
Through this new HQ, CoreFX will gain access to a broad ecosystem of local scientists, analytical capabilities, food application knowledge and pilot-scale processing infrastructure.
“It is exactly the type of research-to-commercialization environment we were looking for in establishing our European headquarters,” added Neville.
Innovation collaboration
CoreNhanced is an ‘enabling technology platform’ used to optimize the performance of nutritional compounds through manufacturing, shelf life, consumption, digestion, release and utilization by the body.
As such, the team works to validate technologies and benefits on a compound-by-compound and application-by-application basis, making customer collaboration a key priority.
“We want European customers to be able to bring us a molecule, a compound, a formulation challenge or ultimately a desired nutritional outcome and work alongside our scientists to develop a commercially viable solution,” said Neville.
He noted that the firm’s dedicated scientific team, Teagasc experts and Moorepark’s pilot-scale capabilities create an “unusually strong environment” in which to do that work.
“Our ambition is for Ireland to become the European front door to CoreFX innovation, not simply a laboratory, but a place where customers can participate in the journey from scientific concept through application and scale-up toward commercialization.”
The Irish operation has launched with three scientists in place, led by Cara Maloney, PhD, a drug-delivery and biomaterials scientist with extensive research in formulation development and analytical methods, and 26 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr Maloney will apply the scientific principles developed in pharmaceutical research to accelerate development of the CoreNhanced technology platform, including protection and shielding, stability, sensory performance, and controlled release of compounds.
“We believe there is considerable opportunity to translate established scientific principles around protection and controlled release into nutrition using appropriate food-grade technologies,” Neville said.
Compounds with potential
The team is particularly interested in compounds where conventional formulation leaves performance opportunities on the table, including poorly water-soluble bioactives, sensitive botanical compounds, lipids and other actives requiring protection or controlled release.
“There is an extraordinary range of compounds from nature with established or emerging nutritional potential, but many are difficult to formulate effectively,” added Neville. “They may be unstable, poorly soluble, unpleasant tasting, incompatible with particular product formats, degraded during processing or digestion, or simply difficult for the body to utilize effectively. Those are the problems CoreNhanced is designed to address.”
He said the firm sees significant innovation opportunities across healthy aging, metabolic health, cognition, gut health, sports and active nutrition and everyday wellness.
“From a technology perspective, we are particularly interested in lipophilic bioactives, botanical compounds, vitamins and other actives where protection, transport, controlled release, stability or sensory performance can materially affect their usefulness.”
