INID Research Lab began with the efforts of Dr Wallace Bridge. Wallace commenced his research scientist career in industry, where he was responsible for the development and optimization of bioprocesses for the manufacture of various products including antibiotics, ethanol, enzymes, microbial biomass, and a range of microbial metabolites. After 15 years, he moved to academia, where he continued to partner with industry in the development of processes and products that had food, nutraceutical, and therapeutic applications.
Wallace commenced his scientific career with the ASX listed Australian company CSR Ltd looking to develop fermentation-based processes, initially for the manufacture of ethanol from sugar cane waste and then for the production of an L-ephedrine intermediate.
Wallace was hired by another ASX listed company Burns Philp & Co Ltd (BPC). At the time, BPC was actively acquiring local and international businesses that manufactured fermentation-based products such as antibiotics, bakers yeast and dairy starter cultures. Wallace was initially seconded to CSIRO (an Australian government funded research agency) to investigate options for optimizing the production of the food grade antibiotic, nisin. Over his 11 years with BPC he was involved in managing research projects for all the company’s core products.
After completing a 2-year secondment in Italy (antibiotic factory), Wallace was seconded to the Cooperative Research Centre for Food Industry Innovation as a program leader (Fractionated Biomass) located within the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. For the next 7 years, his research group focused on developing value-added products that could be derived from bakers yeast biomass.
In early 1997, glutathione was identified by BPC management as a potential alternative to cysteine as a bread improver ingredient. To explore this opportunity, Wallace established a CRC project aimed at developing a fermentation based glutathione manufacturing process which leveraged off IP owned by one of BPC's German yeast companies. It was during this project, that Wallace developed his understanding of glutathione biochemistry, which ultimately allowed him to identify the potential of glutathione's immediate precursor, gamma glutamylcysteine (GGC, Glyteine®).
By late 1997, BPC had to withdraw from the CRC partnership, but Wallace was hired by UNSW and continued with his CRC Program Leader role and also took on the role of Commercialization Manager.
When the CRC tenure was completed in 2001, Wallace continued to work on his own research interests at UNSW. He was keen to test GGC in a range of models for various health conditions associated with cellular glutathione depletion and oxidative stress. The problem was GGC could not be bought in sufficient quantities, so Wallace turned his attention to developing a process for the manufacture of GGC together with his PhD student Martin Zarka.
Martin and Wallace first looked at fermentation processes for GGC manufacture before successfully moving to biocatalysis. UNSW, via its commercialization arm (NewSouth Innovations, NSi), IP protected the process with patent applications that were subsequently granted in the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Australian entrepreneur and visionary Vince Baldini who bought a Newcastle, NSW located GMP pharmaceutical factory from the British company Orica engaged Mr Rajan Shah to identify products that could be potentially produced in the factory.
Rajan is a chemical engineer with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Technical discussions between Rajan, Wallace and Martin ultimately led to the start-up of Biospecialties Australia Pty. Ltd., which licensed the UNSW GGC patent and invested with the support of an Australian Federal government Commercial Ready grant in the construction and operation of a pilot plant to validate and optimize the process for scale-up to industrial scale manufacture.
Wallace, in partnership with Martin and Rajan, continued to focus his UNSW research efforts on exploring the bioavailability and efficacy of GGC. In 2017, the peer review published findings of a UNSW sponsored human clinical study demonstrated that orally administered GGC could transiently increase cellular glutathione above basal levels (homeostasis) [1].
With the passing of Vince, his son Steven took on the financial management role for Biospecialties. The mission to establish a commercially viable Glyteine® manufacturing process was finally completed in Houston, Texas. The design process commenced in early 2017 and the plant was commissioned in 2018, with the first Continual-G supplements being launched in 2019.
CONTINUAL-G® is the only supplement in the market today which contains Glyteine® which has the unique capacity to boost cellular glutathione (GSH) levels beyond homeostasis.
We are all very excited with the prospect of getting to the end of this 20-year process where we can finally start making people's lives better!
Innovation rarely happens in isolation! Hence, we are eager to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas with researchers, scientists, and medical practitioners to bring our collective ideas to life. Connect with us today to know more.