Medicinal and plant biotechnology company Avesthagen Ltd on Tuesday said it was getting ready to produce its plant-based food supplement, a DHA omega-3 fatty acid, and was also open to licensing it for commercial scale manufacture and marketing.

The product, AvestaDHA, is a vegetarian source of DHA (docohexanoic acid) omega-3 essential fatty acid and is derived from naturally occurring microalgae, Avesthagen said in a release.

DHA omega-3 is an essential nutrient for people of all ages and known to promote healthy brain, eye and heart and in treating some cancers.

DHA is commercially available mostly as fish oil.

Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, founder and Chairperson of the Bangalore-based company, said, “Avesthagen is open for global licensing, manufacturing and marketing alliances.

AvestaDHA is also targeted at ameliorating the nutritional health of the bottom of the pyramid and [Avesthagen] invites like-minded government, private organisations and civil society to join in the mission.”

Avesthagen took up its research on DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) with a grant from CSIR under the New Millennium Technology Leadership Initiative. The project also involved the National Institute of Oceanography, the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad.

Avesthagen said it developed a novel patented Schizochytrium linacinum strain SC-1 to produce the vegetarian DHA through fermentation.

“The patented technology has been scaled up and validated for commercialisation,” it said.

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