Technology

Lumoness™ - Food, Beverage and Cosmetic Opportunity

The worldwide food, beverage and cosmetic markets are huge.  In 2005, the global confectionery market equaled $122 billion annually. Hard candies, bubble gum, and toppings are just a few of the targeted uses.  The worldwide beverage market is huge at over $800 billion annually, and the worldwide cosmetics market equals $150 billion annually. BioLume has developed prototypes of lollipops and chewing gum to demonstrate how wellLumoness works.

The food, beverage and cosmetic applications will be regulated as a food additive by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), and thus require no human testing for safety or efficacy. BioLume will have to conduct toxicity testing in several relevant animal models at several “doses” to support a pre-market approval (PMA) petition. The Company plans to work closely with CFSAN’s Office of Food Additive Safety (OFAS) for pre-market approval of Lumoness as a food additive. Since all the bioluminescent proteins within Lumoness are naturally occurring in nature, and derived from sea creatures prominent in the ocean’s food chain that are routinely consumed by man, we believe these proteins are very safe at the “dose levels” necessary to produce the desired bioluminescent glow.  Nevertheless, Prolume has preliminarily tested Lumoness chemistry for skin, eye and oral toxicity, and acute and subchronic toxicity by gavage (tube feeding) and injection, in three relevant animal models.  Mutagenicity testing to confirm our chemistry does not damage DNA, and thus be potentially cancer causing, was also completed. Three independent testing laboratories conducted these tests, and all tests were negative.