Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living, recently announced the completion of its acquisition of Glyco, the world’s leading supplier of Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs). The acquisition of Glycom was first announced on 21 February 2020.
“We warmly welcome the Glycom team to DSM and are proud to call this professional team our colleagues. Together, we will make it possible for our customers to develop efficacious and safe solutions, which is the fundament of both Glycom and DSM values and a part of our promise to help keep the world’s growing population healthy”, says Jeremy Xu, President of DSM’s Human Nutrition and Health.
Odd Hansen, CEO of Glycom, said, “This is a start of an exciting journey to bring us closer together as one organization and a team and to synergistically combine our complementary competences and expertise. We look forward to offering our HMO portfolio and integrating it in our full solutions offering for DSM’s broad and global Early Life Nutrition and Dietary Supplements customer base.”
HMOs are the third largest solid component of human milk after fat and lactose. Naturally occurring in human breast milk, they have evolved over thousands of years, providing us with unique health benefits. In particular, they support both immune and cognitive development. There is significant interest in HMO use as a dietary supplement and potentially in food and beverage and pet food applications, and in fulfilling unmet medical nutrition needs, such as irritable bowel syndrome.
DSM is a leading global solutions provider to the Early Life Nutrition and Dietary Supplement industries with a unique portfolio including nutritional lipids, vitamins and custom nutrient premixes. With the acquisition of Glycom, DSM furthers its leadership in the Early Life Nutrition and Dietary Supplement space.
Glycom is a major pioneer in HMOs, with a rich, science-backed product pipeline, and as the only one, a fully integrated HMO production facility in the world. It has its own product development, preclinical and clinical programs, regulatory team, as well as large-scale production in its state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Esbjerg (Denmark). Next-generation HMOs are part of Glycom’s exciting innovation roadmap, with four new HMOs becoming available this year to further catalyze the already fast-growing HMO market.