India's leading biotech firm Avesthagen Ltd has licensed a German specialty chemicals firm to manufacture and market its innovative patented nutritious animal feed supplement, a company official said Tuesday.
"The non-exclusive agreement to commercialise the fatty acid product will generate $30 million from royalty and sales over the next 10 years," Avesthagen founder chairperson Villoo Morawala Patell told IANS here but did not name the German firm.
The company's innovative patented vegetarian product -- AvestaDHA (Docosa-Hexaenoic Acid) is poly-unsaturated Omega-3 fatty acid derived from micro-algae in the Indian Ocean.
The company developed the nutritious product with a grant from the state-run Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) under the 'new millennium technology leadership initiative' scheme, formulated to produce cost-effective and renewable sources of DHA and other poly-unsaturated fatty acids.
"As AvestaDHA is targetted at improving nutritional health, we are open to global licensing, manufacturing and marketing alliances for human and medical nutrition, animal feed and many other applications," Patell said.
Though DHA is found in different types of fish oil and marine plankton, it is anticipated that the natural supply will be insufficient to meet the growing demand.
As per industry analysts, the algal DHA/EPA (environmental protection agency) market for 2013 is projected to be $525 million, with 24 percent annual growth rate.
According to global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the market for products containing DHA is $26 billion worldwide.
DHA is also found in the human body as a major structural component of the brain's grey matter, eye retina and heart.
"The fatty acid is an essential nutrient for people of all ages and promotes healthy brain, eye and heart and in treating certain cancers," Patell said.
The product is also used as an additive in animal feeds and aquaculture.
"DHA can help overcome the nutrition deficit in majority of the people across the country. It can also be effective to overcome physical and mental stunting among nutritionally deprived children," Patell added.
As an integrated systems biology platform, the city-based Avesthagen focuses on achieving convergence of food, pharma and genetics leading to predictive, preventive and personalised healthcare, in partnership with top 10 global biotech firms.
