Indena partners on the development of DNA authentication kits

Indena is the world's leading company in the identification, development and production of active principles derived from plants, for use in the pharmaceutical, health-food and personal care industries.

Indena, a privately owned Italian company, has around 800 employees (10% of them dedicated to full-time research)  and has cultivation, manufacturing, and sales in more than 70 countries throughout the world.

The key to Indena's success is its research, covering: the screening of medicinal plants for pharmacological benefits; the identification of new active principles; the development of cutting-edge extraction and purification systems for industrial applications.

Phyto-chemical research is carried out in Indena's own Research Center in Settala, Italy. Indena also co-operates with the world's most prestige universities and private research institutes in the biological assessment of the safety and effectiveness of its products up to clinical phase I/II.

A key strategic research objective is the development of new active principles for pharmaceutical applications. This also forms an indispensable base for the health-food and personal care industries.

The pharmaceutical side of the company is focused mainly on anti-cancer drugs, which are produced to US-FDA, ICH and EU standards at Indena's High Containment Manufacturing facilities in Settala, Italy. Indena's drug discovery strategy is to develop new chemical entities up to "Phase I/II" of clinical studies, and then license them to pharmaceutical companies.

Today Indena is also concentrating its efforts on the industrial production of high-quality standardised botanical derivatives, which are important ingredients in health food products. In fact, the company produces standardised extracts from edible plants that are traditionally recognised as having therapeutic properties, as well as from plants that have proven pharmacological value. Indena's research and production activities are particularly attentive to plant-based principles that have anti-oxidant properties and prevent damage caused by free radicals.

Backed by more than 90 years of botanical experience, Indena has developed a plantation network, managed by experts, to supply its research and production centres with officinal plants, while ensuring bio-diversity and protecting the ecosystem from uncontrolled harvesting. Today more than 60% of the raw material used in manufacturing comes from cultivations.

Indena's decades-long global presence in the plant extraction industry is a guarantee of its in-depth knowledge and understanding of the business, market trends and legal considerations. There is constant communication and interaction between the company's experts, who cooperate on the updating of all the main pharmacopoeias, and the major international regulatory authorities such as WHO, EMA, and ESCOP.
The company has more than 150 primary patents and has published more than 700 scientific studies.