Vitux AS won an award from NutraIngredients-USA in 2021 with an entry submitted by one of its clients, Childlife Essentials, based in El Segundo, CA. The company won NutraIngredients-USA’s award for Best Omega-3 Product of the Year for a children’s chewable DHA product based on Vitux’s delivery mode, which is branded as ConCordix.
Vitux, which is based in Oslo, licensed the technology from a local university. It was a case of a discovery in one field coming to fruition in another.
Invention in one field benefits another
“It’s an invention from the University of Trondheim,” Marc Van Maris, PhD, told NutraIngredients-USA. Van Maris is the senior vice president of sales and marketing for Vitux.
“A professor there was asked to make a reconstruction of a female breast for use in radiation research for the treatment of breast cancer,” he said.
Van Maris said existing models, based on the kind of silicone implants then commonly employed in reconstructive surgeries, might have looked like breasts, but were of a different structure and so not very useful for the purpose.
“Human breast tissue is about 60% water and 40% lipids. But water and oil don’t like to mix, so he solidified that within in a gelatin matrix,” Van Maris said.
“Then, being from Norway, he thought, maybe he could do the same using fish oil,” he added.
Norway has a centuries long tradition of harvesting fatty fish like herring. Indeed, trade in dried, salted and pickled herring was the foundation of economic development in the region in the Middle Ages under the aegis of the Hanseatic League. Norway still ranks among the world’s leaders in fish oil production and is a center of innovation in the field.