Symrise: Strategic partnership with BRAIN and AnalytiCon Discovery

The main goal of the strategic partnership is the development of innovative, all-natural cosmetic active ingredients and aroma molecules.

AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH, headquartered in Potsdam, is leading in the field of generating and utilizing highly diverse natural product compound libraries featuring fully elucidated structures. Besides its substantial compound libraries, the company brings into the partnership its natural product specific expertise for structural optimization.

BRAIN AG a leading industrial biotechnology company is based in Zwingenberg and develops new bioactive natural compounds as well as proprietary enzymes for the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries. As part of the planned cooperation, its customized cellular based screening platforms will be made available to Symrise with the goal to identify novel bioactive substances for innovative cosmetics. This alliance will allow Symrise to forge into new territory in the development of highly effective cosmetic active ingredients. Symrise’s expertise in the field of natural ingredients for skin and hair care will also be enhanced.

“In the growing cosmeceutical market we identified a huge potential for our company following an innovation-oriented product strategy using bioactive natural compounds. The co-operation with the two leading biotech companies BRAIN AG and AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH perfectly supplements and strengthens our own research and development strategies“, says Achim Daub, member of the managing board of Symrise and therein responsible for the Segment Scent & Care. „We will further extend this successful strategy and are glad that we managed to build up a strong consortium.together with these two outstanding companies. This strategic partnership also in future will enable us to develop intelligent, natural, bioactive cosmetics with healthy characteristics for our customers. “ „We are glad that with Symrise, as a successful and globally leading producer of cosmetic ingredients, we identified and convinced a strong partner for the utilisation of our innovative screening technology“, comments Dr. Holger Zinke, CEO of BRAIN. „All three members of the newly formed consortium regard the fast growing cosmeceutical market as an attractive segment for the application of our unique technologies making the huge biological diversity of natural compounds accessible.” ”The co-operation between Symrise, BRAIN und AnalytiCon supports the increasing relevance of natural product based discovery of active agents in the cosmetics industry,“ points out Dr. Lutz Müller-Kuhrt, CEO of Analyt-iCon Discovery, reflecting the potential of the consortium. ”The intensive and complementary co-operation of the three partners enables a rapid and highly efficient identification, optimization and development of innovative compounds for high value cosmetics, thus ensuring market shares for our industrial partner in a strongly growing field of business.”

About Symrise

Symrise is a global supplier of fragrances, flavorings and raw materials and active ingredients for the perfume, cosmetics and food industry. With sales of €1.23 billion in 2006 (current estimate), the corporation ranks among the top four in the international flavors and fragrances market. Symrise is headquartered in Holzminden, Germany and operates a total of 31 sites in Europe, Asia, the US and South America. With over 50 registered patents each year, Symrise is one of the most innovative manufacturers on the market. Our products are used in the perfume, cosmetics and food industries, and everyday life would not be the same without them. We combine our knowledge about consumer trends with cutting-edge technologies and have focused on developing innovative trend and lifestyle products with a specific added value for consumers. Symrise – Always inspiring more…

[(www.symrise.com)] Contact: Katja Derow, red roses communications GmbH, phone: +49 40 / 46 96 770-10, E-mail: k.derow@redroses-pr.com

About BRAIN

BRAIN - Biotechnology Research And Information Network AG is a research and devel-opment company focusing on enzymes, bioactive natural compounds, and technical proteins. The innovative EvoSolution® technology platform brings together the biochemical and biocatalytic potential of microbial and plant biodiversity with modern microbiology methods. BRAIN’s head office located in Zwingenberg in the Rhine-Main-Neckar region, one of Germany’s most important research and industrial areas, is home to a comprehensive unique BioArchive of natural biodiversity, containing microorganisms and algae plus the vast corresponding genetic resources including that of hitherto uncultivated species. Within these resources, BRAIN identifies and develops new enzymes and production organisms for industrial use in the chemical and life sciences sectors. Furthermore, linking chemical structure to biological function, using BRAIN`s proprietary cellular based assay tool box new bioactive natural compounds for the food and cosmetic markets are identified and accompanied to an industrial application. BRAIN was founded in 1993 and currently employs a staff of 50 people.

[(www.brain-biotech.de)] Contact: Dr. Holger Zinke, BRAIN, Tel.: 06251 / 9331-0, Email: hz@brain-biotech.de

About AnalytiCon Discovery

The internationally operating AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH is global market leader in the field of natural product (NP) compound libraries featuring fully elucidated structures and - with its 50 employees at Potsdam Biotech Campus - offers services along the complete supply chain for NP-based Drug Discovery and Development. The company offers the full range of services for the accelerated development of NP-based lead structures, starting with the procurement of raw biomaterials, via fermentation, isolation and high-throughput structure elucidation to NP-focussed medicinal chemistry. The innovative technology concept employed by AnalytiCon lead to top-class contracts with companies from the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics industry in Europe, USA and Japan. Furthermore, AnalytiCon has established the BIOS-concept (Biology Oriented Synthesis), a technology for the development and production of focussed combinatorial compound libraries based on rare NP core structures containing bioactive structural elements (NatDiverseTM ). In the process, the company has gained access to currently over 15% of all known natural products worldwide as well as to thousands of yet unpublished structures.

[(www.ac-discovery.com)] Contact: Dr. Lutz Müller-Kuhrt, AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH, tel.: +49 331 / 2300-310, e-mail: lmk@ac-discovery.com