Along with society
Improving patient QOL through supporting their nutritional needs with enjoyable meals
The Ajinomoto Group aspires to use AminoScience, a science we have refined since our founding, to go beyond solving food and health issues and contribute to Well-being.
The Group is committed to helping extend healthy life expectancy in addition to assisting patient health through medical food.
What are Medical Foods?
Medical foods are foods designed to meet the nutritional needs of patients whose needs cannot be met by a regular diet due to illnesses.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines medical foods as the following:
A food which is formulated to be consumed or administered enterally under the supervision of a physician and which is intended for the specific dietary management of a disease or condition for which distinctive nutritional requirements, based on recognized scientific principles, are established by medical evaluation.
- FDA Definition (Medical Foods Guidance Documents & Regulatory Information)
The goal of medical foods is to improve the QOL of patients living with diseases that cannot be cured by modern medicine by enabling patients to meet their nutritional needs specific to their individual disease.
Two companies with knowledge of medical food joined the Group
The Ajinomoto Group entered the U.S. medical food market in 2017 when the U.S. medical food company Cambrooke Therapeutics, Inc. (now Ajinomoto Cambrooke, Inc.), became a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Cambrooke Therapeutics, Inc. was founded in Massachusetts in 2000. The two children of the founder and his wife suffered from phenylketonuria, a type of congenital amino acid metabolism disorder. This is a disease that cannot be cured with modern medicine. It requires lifelong dietary treatment with a low protein diet through medical food for protein intake that does not contain amino acids, which patients cannot metabolize. This disease may cause severe mental development disorders if dietary treatment is not properly adhered to.
The founders began by making hand-made products for phenylketonuria, in the hopes that their children would have a full meal. Later, they went on to manufacture and market products for multiple incurable diseases.
Then in 2020, the Group acquired the Irish company Nualtra Limited as a subsidiary. Nualtra Limited was founded in 2012. The company developed oral nutritional supplements (ONS) products, a type of high-energy, high-protein medical food targeting elderly people with dietary restrictions due to illness or who are suffering from aging-related nutritional deficiencies and marketed these in the UK and Ireland.
Aiming to create medical food that meets nutritional needs and tastes delicious
Humans do not eat for the sole purpose of nutritional intake. Good food and conversation at the dinner table are things to be enjoyed, and this is no different for patients with illnesses. Foods with good taste, texture, and form are easy to consume and add color to our life. In other words, medical food is like a partner that helps patients maintain their QOL while meeting the special nutritional needs of their disease.
We believe we will be able to meet the diverse needs of patients by combining the businesses developed by these two companies with the Delicious Technologies and application technology of the Ajinomoto Group, and the knowledge of the physiological functions of amino acids. We hope to continue contributing to the health of patients living with diseases by providing products that both taste delicious and satisfy nutritional needs in areas where existing products do not meet the needs of patients and medical professionals.