Symrise, one of the world's leading manufacturers of fragrances and flavorings as well as ingredients for cosmetics, has acquired licenses for two new groups of cosmetic active ingredients. These promising results were achieved in a joint development project with biotech specialist BRAIN and natural-product company AnalytiCon. The license gives Symrise international marketing rights.

The goal of the strategic partnership which was initiated in April 2007 was to jointly develop innovative and all-natural active ingredients for use in cosmetics. “This alliance allows Symrise to follow new paths in developing highly effective cosmetic ingredients and continuing to expand its competence in the field of active ingredients for skin and hair care,” explains Gabriele Vielhaber, Vice President, Innovation R&D, Life Essentials.

By June 30, 2008, the three cooperation partners successfully completed two screening procedures to identify multiple groups of innovative active ingredients thus enabling Symrise to develop new active components for use in cosmetics.

As of October 1, 2008, Symrise has acquired the exclusive marketing rights to two of these groups of active ingredients. Clinical tests have proven the high efficacy of both groups, and Symrise will now develop them with the goal of a market launch in 2009. They will be used primarily in deodorants as well as products for sensitive skin.

“Working with companies such as BRAIN and AnalytiCon, both leaders in their fields, has complemented our own R&D activities and made a major contribution to our innovation pipeline after a remarkably short development phase,” as Achim Daub, head of Symrise's Scent & Care division, says. “We will keep following this successful strategy and are happy to have established such a powerful alliance in the field of natural ingredients with these two outstanding partners.”

Holger Zinke, CEO of BRAIN, adds, “In only 18 months we managed to develop two `first-in-class´ products, all the way from assay development and high-throughput screening to in vivo efficacy tests. This demonstrates the remarkable quality and strength of our joint efforts.”

“The trilateral cooperation between Symrise, BRAIN and AnalytiCon is an outstanding example of a successful and efficient division of labor and networking among specialized partners. The results far exceed our expectations,” as Lutz Müller-Kuhrt, head of AnalytiCon, comments. “The intense cooperation of three such complementary partners made us exceptionally efficient in identifying, optimizing and developing innovative active ingredients for top-quality cosmetics.”

About Symrise - www.symrise.com
Symrise is a global supplier of fragrances, flavorings and raw materials and active ingredients for the perfume, cosmetics and food industry.
Its sales of €1.27 billion in 2007 place the company among the top four in the international flavors and fragrances market. Headquartered in Holzminden, Germany, Symrise is represented in more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, the United States and South America.
With more than 40 first patent applications per year, Symrise is one of the most innovative manufacturers on the market. Used by manufacturers of perfumes, cosmetics and foods, our products are an inseparable part of daily life. At Symrise we combine an awareness of consumer trends with cutting-edge technologies, focusing on innovative fashion and lifestyle products that have additional practical value for the consumer. Symrise – always inspiring more…

About BRAIN AG - www.brain-biotech.de
BRAIN AG is an industrial ”white” biotech company which discovers and develops novel bioactive natural compounds and proprietary enzymes for its partners and customers in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the food and cosmetics industries. With its unique approach to the discovery and production of new biological compounds and biocatalysts, the company achieves creative solutions by harnessing nature’s untapped biodiversity. Its success is built on its proprietary BioArchive, comprising millions of genes, proteins and metabolic pathways from microbial isolates and metagenome libraries. Since its foundation in 1993, BRAIN has entered into over 50 strategic collaborations with nearly all the relevant companies within the chemical industry. Currently, BRAIN employs 72 highly skilled people. BRAIN has entered into partnerships with BASF, Ciba, Clariant, Evonik Degussa, Genencor, Henkel, Nutrinova, Sandoz, Schering, Südzucker and Symrise, to name but a few. For his groundbreaking industrial biotechnology activities for a sustainable “biologisation of the chemical industry” using nature`s toolbox for industrial processes, BRAIN CEO Dr. Holger Zinke received the ”Deutschen Umweltpreis 2008” of the ”Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt,” (DBU).

About AnalytiCon Discovery - www.ac-discovery.com
The internationally operating AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH is the global market leader in the field of natural product (NP) compound libraries featuring fully elucidated structures. With its 60 employees at Potsdam Biotech Campus, it offers services for every phase of the supply chain for NP-based drug discovery and development.  The company offers the full range of services for the accelerated development of NP-based lead structures, from procurement of raw biomaterials to fermentation, isolation and high-throughput structure elucidation all the way to NP-focused medicinal chemistry. The innovative technology concept employed by AnalytiCon has led to top-class contracts with companies from the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics industry in Europe, USA and Japan. Furthermore, AnalytiCon has established the BIOS concept (Biology Oriented Synthesis), a technology for developing and producing focused combinatorial compound libraries based on rare NP core structures that contain bioactive structural elements (Nat-DiverseTM). In the process, the company has gained access to currently over 15% of all known natural products worldwide as well as to thousands of yet-unpublished structures.