INRAE, Evolugate Enter Option License Agreement to Advance Probiotics to Manage Human Cholesterol

INRAE, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an exclusive option license agreement with biotechnology company Evolugate of Gainesville, FL to optimize its probiotic to manage human hypercholesterolemia, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. INRAE is the first worldwide research institute in agronomy. INRAE-Micalis has been investigating the human microbiome to identify microbes that can influence hypercholesterolemia. They have selected microbes that degrade or sequester cholesterol and hydrolyze bile acids. The goal of this collaboration is to identify future probiotic candidates that can reduce circulating LDL and to discover ways of increasing the population of these microbes in the human microbiome. Evolugate has a keen interest in entering the therapeutic and probiotic markets by improving the performance of microorganisms that have beneficial health effects. "Being able to improve complex traits of phenotypes without the caveats which result in a GMO is key to us in this type of project," says Eudes de Crecy, CEO of Evolugate, adding, "We very much believe our technology is ideal for this aspect, resulting in a probiotic that can gently amend the microbiome of human hosts in the right direction with the better metabolic performance of the improved organism." Evolugate and INRAE will set up a collaboration for the development of novel probiotic micro-organisms capable of lowering LDL.