Duo-capsule and beadlets: Lonza shines the spotlight on increasing supplement performance

Traditionally, increasingly the bioavailability, stability, and timed and targeted release of key ingredients were main challenges faced when enhancing supplement performance, June Lin, the Senior Director and Global Head of Marketing at Lonza Consumer Health and Nutrition told NutraIngredients-Asia.​

To address the challenges, Lin said that the firm was working on dosage form technologies that could be used in both hard capsules and liquid-filled capsules.

An example is the use of beadlets. She said that hard capsules made of small beadlets allowed “timed release”​ of the ingredients, as such, the ingredients could be delivered to the body throughout the day.

Besides capsules, she said that beadlets could also be used in ready-to-mix blends and functional foods.

She added that beadlets also facilitate the combination of ingredients that were typically incompatible, this in turn help to increase the nutritional benefits that a capsule could provide.

In the same vein, she pointed out that the capsule-in-capsule technology could also allow manufacturers to combine traditionally incompatible ingredients into one dosage form.

This technology involves inserting a smaller pre-filled capsule into a larger liquid-filled capsule.

For example, solubilised prebiotics is placed in the outer capsule while probiotics could be placed in the inner capsule. This means that prebiotic in the liquid form could be released immediately, while probiotics would be released at a later time.

“​This significantly broadens the spectrum of supplement combinations possible to formulators, while dosage forms such as liquid-filled capsules also help to relieve the ‘pill burden’ for consumers,”​ she said.

She also said that while APAC’s supplement market had evolved significantly over the past few years in terms of trends, ingredient innovations and finished products, capsules “remain the dosage format of choice for consumers.” ​

Liquid dosage forms​

However, when it comes to active and sports nutrition in APAC, Lin said that liquid ingredients are increasingly sought after, due to the fast absorption rates.

In this case, she the firm had come up with liquid-filled capsules that could contain liquid or semi-solid ingredients.

Such dosage forms could be applied to sports nutrition ingredients such as HMB and L-carnitine.

“Sports nutrition products are increasingly popular with consumers across APAC, particularly Chinese consumers, driven in part by government investment and initiatives such as the launch of the National Fitness Plan in 2016 by the Chinese government​

“The market for sports nutrition products in APAC is, however, at a relatively early stage of development, and as such supplement brands are focusing more on consumer education, particularly to link nutritional ingredients to specific health and performance benefits,”​ she concluded.