DianaPlantSciences is pleased to announce its selection as the recipient of the 2013 Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ) Award for Innovation. DianaPlantSciences is the only company in the world focused on the development of nutritional ingredients through plant cell culture technology. Plant cell culture technology is the growth and reproduction of plants, plant tissues, and/or plant cells in a controlled environment. This technology offers the sustainable production of plant cells with desired bioactives for human use.

"We're thrilled to be recognized as an NBJ Innovation Award Winner," said Marc Philouze, president of DianaPlantSciences. "This award recognizes the years of investment in developing the technology as well as validates plant cell culture technology's future impact on the industry for producing effective, natural and consistent ingredients." 

The NBJ Awards are given out every year at the NBJ Summit, held annually in July at the St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point, Calif. Open nominations are accepted at the end of the prior year. In 2013, over 300 nominations were submitted and reviewed by an industry advisory board that selected the winners.

The process of producing ingredients from plant cell culture technology utilizes non-GMO methods where the whole plant cell remains intact throughout the entire process and cells are carefully selected to exhibit the best concentration and distribution of targeted actives naturally inherent to the plant. In 2013, DianaPlantSciences commercialized its first ingredient—Cocovanol™ Cocoa Actives—based on the technology.

Producing ingredients from plant cell culture technology offer many advantages. Plant cell culture technology is sustainable and can yield an unlimited amount of plant materials all while minimizing the land, energy and water requirements. Plant cell culture technology also allows you to target specific actives within a plant to produce significantly more of the desired compounds while producing significantly less of the undesirable ones. 

DianaPlantSciences develops, manufactures and markets ingredients produced from its proprietary plant cell culture technology. DianaPlantSciences is also looking to establish partnerships with companies seeking to target and produce novel ingredients utilizing plant cell culture technology.

"Developing an ingredient through plant cell culture technology is an ideal way for companies to have a unique and proprietary ingredient," said Philouze. "We've made it attractive with our research partnerships so the investment should make sound business sense for most companies."

In addition to Cocovanol™, DianaPlantSciences will soon be introducing another ingredient based on plant cell culture technology and it has a pipeline of over a dozen others.