24/06/09 Biotech company Pharming Group NV announced that it has initiated a two-year Food & Nutrition Delta (FND) innovation project to further develop human lactoferrin (hLF) as a nutritional product to manage inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).

The goal of this program is to demonstrate safety and effectiveness of hLF as a component of functional foods for maintaining remission periods in patients with IBD. Pharming is collaborating with NIZO food research BV (Ede), the Maastricht University Medical Centre (Division of Gastroenterology-Hepatology), NUTRIM School for Nutrition, Toxicology and Metabolism (Maastricht) and TNO (Zeist). A € 400.000 subsidy was granted by FND, which is an Innovation Programme of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, executed by its agency SenterNovem. The subsidy will cover a significant portion of the costs of the early phases of the project.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a group of intestinal inflammatory conditions, characterized by diarrhea and abdominal pain, which reduce quality of life. The major types of IBD are Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis. In the Western world, the number of IBD patients is rapidly growing. In 2008, almost 2.2 million individuals in Europe (90,000 patients in the Netherlands) suffered from IBD and in the Netherlands alone, 5,500 new patients are identified yearly. Current therapies are aiming at inducing remission or preventing relapses and are associated with high costs and possible side effects. Therefore, a significant medical need currently exists.

As hLF has anti-infective and anti-inflammatory properties, it could provide an effective nutritional support for IBD-patients potentially preventing or delaying periods of relapse of the disease. Pharming’s human lactoferrin might also be beneficial in alleviating or preventing symptoms of other chronic or acute intestinal diseases such as Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS or spastic colon) and Traveler's diarrhea.