SupplySide Global 2025 live: Balchem redefines supplement formulation with StabiliPro and Optifolin+
30 Oct 2025 | Balchem
Live on the showroom floor, we discuss Balchem’s key innovations reshaping supplement formulation — StabiliPro and Optifolin+ — with the company’s senior manager for strategic marketing and business development, Lauren Eisen, and director of strategic marketing and business development, Josephine Nakhla. They share how StabiliPro improves probiotic stability across various formats, while Optifolin+ provides benefits for metabolic health, cognitive function, and wider applications beyond prenatal care.
Hello everybody.
This is William Bradford Nichols, the editor of Nutrition Insight, and I'm here live in Las Vegas, Nevada at Supply Side Global 2025.
And today we are talking with Lauren Eisen, the senior manager for strategic marketing and business development at Balcom.
Hello, Lauren, how are you today?
Hi, nice to see you.
Nice to see you.
And we also have Josephine Macklin, the director for strategic marketing and business development at Balcom.
How are you?
Josephine.
Hi, nice to see you.
It's nice to see you.
I have some questions already for you, and if it's fine, I'd love to just jump right in.
You have a new product, Stabilaro.
Can you tell me a little bit about how does Stabilaro sort of improve probiotic stability compared with other excipients on the market, and what sort of self-life extensions have you observed with your studies?
Is our new excipient portfolio that we're launching today at Supply Site Global.
Tomorrow we'll be presenting Cybilaro Advantage, all about our recent case study that we conducted at Valchem in conjunction with one of our partners, where we showed that Sabilaro allows for shelf life improvement as as reducing overage and overdosing in probiotic manufacturing.
Speaking of staying on stabilaro for a moment, can you tell me, can it be used across different formats or like how can it be used?
Yes, that's a great question, and we get this question a lot since the press release came out.
So we have looked at Sabilaro in a few different applications.
The case study is centered, the scope of the case study is centered more around Lactobacillus as a probiotic.
We haven't tested it formally in terms of the advantages in food and beverage.
You can certainly use Sabilaro.
Sabilaro, Isomalt, they are single ingredient products.
You can certainly use them in food and beverage, but the low water activity advantage isn't really relevant in cases where water is a factor.
But there are advantages to using it in food beverages as , food and beverages as.
But the majority of the focus so far has been on the probiotic applications.
That's pretty exciting.
Yes, we're excited about it.
We're looking to see who else we can partner with to look at different.
Of Sabilaro, so perhaps beyond the current applications in probiotics, but also beyond the lactobacillus strain to see how it performs.
With sort of like clean label demand continues to be a growing trend.
How does Stabilipro sort of align with consumer expectations for transparency and natural ingredients?
That's a great question.
It is a single ingredient, so we have 4tabilaro products in the current portfolio.
They're all Single ingredient platform, so very simple ingredient line, very straightforward, so it should make clean label manufacturing more straightforward, but also allows for additional multifunctional benefits beyond just the excipient.
So for instance, our Sabillaro 1000 is an inulin or chicory root fiber.
So not only do you get the incipient's low water activity benefit, but you also get the inulin or prebiotic fiber benefit.
In the probiotic, I have one last question.
It kind of mentions from what I read that manufacturers often add extra probiotics to compensate for losses during processing.
How doesbibo sort of help reduce those coverages for overages and what cost of formulation benefits might it bring to product developers?
Yes, that's a great question.
I'm going to let the speakers tomorrow address the costing benefits.
We definitely I would love to work with customers.
It's going to be very specific on how much they're paying for the probiotic strain, so it will be very dependent on that because the ranges are all over from very low price to very high at 3000 kg.
So we really want to work directly with customers and prospects in order to realize those potential cost and use opportunities.
Real quick, Josephina, can you tell us a little bit about the What you're presenting tomorrow, so tomorrow we're presenting at the Product Development Theater booth 8001 on the show floor and the title of the talk is Cybillopro Advantage.
We'll be talking all about how Cybillopro benefits probiotic applications and how overdosing or overage can be reduced and shelf life extended.
The time of the talk is 11:30 to 11:50.
Please stop by.
It's going to be a great talk.
Awesome.
And I also have some questions for you.
You have some new studies out on optifolin, and from what I've read, it is like 2.
2.6 times more bioavailable and absorbed 3.5 times faster than standard folic acid.
How will that sort of translate to improvements and meaningful benefits for consumers across different ages?
It's a great question.
So this is a newly published study for Optilin Plus.
It's really important for us because it's the first published study for opt as a clinical study for us in the marketplace.
And why this is important for us in the market is because we know that commodity products containing folic acid, not everyone can convert that.
So being able to Address consumers in all different life stages from prenatal through adulthood with faster absorbed and bioavailable forms as they can now go from folic acid into the right bioavailable form of L5MTHF becomes really critical in the dosage form used with our Optifolin Plus.
So now that we can address that with clinical research, it's important to see that with bio.
And absorbed forms we can do that with our ingredients.
Awesome.
Also, I read that 40% of the US population carries that, and I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly, the methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase gene variation.
I think I'm somewhere in the neighborhood.
How does optifolin sort of help overcome these metabolic bottlenecks compared with traditional.
Folic acid supplementation.
Yes, so as we just talked about having a bioavailable form and a form that is absorbable, as 40% of the population can't actually convert that MTHFR enzyme, that means that you're not getting the full amount of folic acid when you take that dosage.
So let's say you're taking 400 mcg of folic acid, you might not get that final form of bioavailable.
5 MTHF, so you're not getting that full dosage form.
So what it means is if you're taking something like Optifolate Plus, you're actually taking that 5MTHF or methyl tetrahydrofolic.
You're taking it directly.
So those that have that genetic variant or SMP, you don't have to worry about meeting that conversion step.
You're taking the bioavailable form without worrying about meeting the dosage requirement or lacking thereof.
So Opti Plus allows you to have the full benefits of that absorption, the bioavailability, and meeting the requirements of what you're paying for in the final dosage.
How does all of that sort of affect its different uses within F&B supplements and stuff like that?
What can you target with this?
Sure, so we're really targeting dietary supplements at the moment, and this is really critical.
Look at different delivery formats too.
So Opticallin Plus as a choline enriched folate using our vitacholine can really help across from a stability and solubility standpoint.
It allows us to target those dosage formats like powders, tablets, capsules, gel packs, things like this that we are seeing here at the show today.
We've seen a lot of new innovation and Optilin Plus can really help across those formats.
All right, final question.
So since folate is often associated with like prenatal nutrition, that's how most people know it, but your study also included some sort of broader demographics.
What emerging applications are there for brain health, cardiovascular support, epigenetic health, or any of those things that you see for Optifolin plus in the wider population?
Yeah, it's a great question too.
So you can even see behind me a little bit of the DNA helix, and so, like you just said, folate is.
Historically known for prenatal and of course Optical Plus absolutely supports that as a form of folate and vitamin B9, but it has many benefits beyond that.
So as we see a lot of categories at the show here today, Optilin Plus is really critical with its 7 times methylation benefit, and we really want to harp on that with a benefit that can go into things like healthy aging, longevity, cellular.
Health and then beyond that with homocysteine regulation, especially into cognition and cardiovascular health as.
So there's a lot of areas that we're seeing growing and that we can expand on and support for innovation for other brands here at the show.
All right, Lauren, Josephine, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Amazing insights.
Thank you so much.
I hope you have a great rest of the show and we look forward to hearing a lot more from you guys in the future.
Thank you so much pleasure.
