Our Platforms

VitaKey Platforms Enable the Next Generation of Health & Wellness

VitaKey's technology platforms provide for a wide range of breakthrough delivery mechanisms triggered by various physiological or environmental stimuli. Our technology delivers targeted and time-controlled release of probiotics, macronutrients (proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), and bioactives (phytonutrients and antioxidants) with excellent stability, bioavailability, and extended release.

Advancing landmark research originating from the Langer Lab at MIT, VitaKey’s precision delivery platforms for nutrients enable the next generation of health and wellness. Globally, we are running out of food — by 2050, we will need to produce 60% more food to feed over nine billion people worldwide. While we have made headway on feeding the population with cheap, processed food, the unintended consequence is that we have more people that are overweight yet malnourished. For instance, 74% of adults in the US are obese or overweight, yet, 92% of Americans suffer from at least one nutrient or mineral deficiency. Precision delivery of nutrients is the key to addressing these global challenges. The VitaKey platforms serve as the foundation for creating nutrient-based solutions in four of our areas of focus: 1) satiety and weight management, 2) synergizing medicine and nutrition, 3) sustainable, providing essential nutrition to the world’s population, and 4) methane reduction.

To that end, VitaKey’s technologies can be applied at every link of the food chain. It offers limitless applications for precision nutrition in food and beverages for humans ranging from infant to elderly, including customized diets, as well as, seeds and agriculture, pet food and animal feed. Additionally, the targeted and time-controlled release delivery technologies can enhance desired flavors and aromas as well as mask unpleasant tastes and odors.

Precision Delivery^® of Nutrition

VitaKey is pioneering Precision Delivery — providing the right nutrients, in the right amount, delivered to the right place, at the right time, over the desired period of time. Until now, nutrients in conventional foods degrade during processing, manufacturing, storage, cooking, ingestion and digestion due to environmental factors such as heat, moisture, oxygen and light. This results in the ingestion of degraded nutrients, thereby limiting absorption and the health benefits of natural foods. To overcome this, a common strategy is to ‘over-fortify’ food to meet dietary standards. With the VitaKey platforms, overfortification to meet dietary standards is eliminated. Through precision delivery, new ways to extend their benefit, prolong their time of action, or increase their bioavailability all become possible.

In addition to improving the nutrient density of existing fortified food and beverages, VitaKey’s work in stabilizing nutrients in harsh environmental conditions enables the creation of novel products that combine nutrients in food and beverage formats that were previously not possible.

Developed in the MIT laboratory of engineer, inventor, scientist and entrepreneur Dr. Robert S. Langer — a founding father of drug delivery and controlled-release technology — the VitaKey platform began with the preservation of 11 out of 11 different micronutrients (iron, zinc, niacin, iodine, biotin, and vitamins A, B2, B9, B12, C, and D). As many as four micronutrients at once can be combined in a single particle. Today, VitaKey’s platforms can be applied to probiotics, macronutrients, micronutrients and bioactives.

Protecting, stabilizing and delivering nutrients essential to health and wellness

Obesity and diet-related diseases are a growing global epidemic. Decades of R&D have led to drugs (SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists) that manage these metabolic disorders. While these drugs are effective for weight loss and ongoing research supports other potential health benefits (including the prevention of kidney and heart disease, Alzheimer’s treatment), they are not a perfect solution. They can be costly, require a prescription, and users commonly experience side effects such as muscle loss, decreased bone density, nausea, malnutrition, and GI concerns. In addition to these drugs, VitaKey believes Precision Delivered nutrients are key to sustainable weight loss and management. VitaKey has developed “companion products” for these weight loss drugs that provide essential nutrition while addressing side effects to improve individuals’ experience and outcomes. Additionally, VitaKey is developing a Satiety Platform that uses the body’s natural satiety mechanisms to create a suite of products for weight management. Using nutrient-based approaches, VitaKey’s Precision Delivery technologies will promote a greater feeling of fullness and naturally control satiety with less food, fewer calories, and no side effects. Importantly, VitaKey technologies are seamlessly incorporated into convenient foods and beverages to promote long term compliance to ensure weight management goals are not only attained but maintained.

VitaKey can also provide delivery technology for probiotics, including non-spore forming probiotics. These beneficial live cultures — essential to the maintenance of a healthy microbiome — can now be added to a variety of foods/beverages and preserved at every stage of preparation. The protective technology not only preserves them in combination with other foods but permits them to be used in conjunction with pharmaceutical antibiotics, enabling treatment without side effects.

Macronutrients, including proteins, can be delivered using extended release technology to provide prolonged nutrition and longer-lasting support for muscle building, recovery, and maintenance.

With VitaKey, consumers can enjoy the benefits of vital nutrients without making drastic changes to their eating habits or following a complicated schedule of vitamin pills, dietary supplements, or burdensome macronutrient regimens to supply the body with energy. Adding potent and durable micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), macronutrients (proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids), probiotics, prebiotics, nutraceuticals, antioxidants and flavors to food and beverage manufacturing can dramatically improve the quality of the foods we eat and enhance the health and wellness and boost the immunity of men, women and children at every stage of life.

Emergent challenges with food security and resilience can be addressed. VitaKey’s technology provides solutions for reducing food waste by mitigating over fortification and extending shelf-stability, for reducing malnutrition by improving the health benefits of food and beverages through stabilization and targeted precision delivery, and for improving sustainability by optimizing crop growth. With VitaKey's customizable solutions, a limited amount of nutrients can be used to nourish a larger global population to help ensure the health and wellness of the entire world for years to come.

VitaKey Technology: A Convenient and Sustainable Solution

With VitaKey, consumers can enjoy the benefits of essential nutrients without making drastic changes to their eating habits or following a complicated schedule of vitamin pills, dietary supplements, or burdensome macronutrient regimens to supply the body with energy. Adding potent and durable probiotics, macronutrients, micronutrients and bioactives to food and beverage manufacturing can dramatically improve the quality of the foods we eat and enhance the health and wellness individuals at every stage of life.

Emergent challenges with food security and resilience can be addressed. VitaKey’s technology provides solutions for reducing food waste by mitigating over fortification and extending shelf-stability, for reducing malnutrition by improving the health benefits of food and beverages through stabilization and targeted precision delivery, and for improving sustainability by optimizing crop growth. With VitaKey's customizable solutions, a limited amount of nutrients can be used to nourish a larger global population to help ensure the health and wellness of the entire world for years to come.