Global Probiotics Council

The Global Probiotic Council

The Global Probiotics Council (GPC) is a committee established in 2004 by Groupe DANONE and Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd. The role of the GPC is to promote and/or advance probiotics in the world, through means such as:

1. Raising public awareness of probiotics and their health benefits through education and dissemination of information;
2. Communicating with government bodies, and other relevant interest groups; and
3. Building relationships with leading researchers and research institutions and supporting collaborative research in the area of probiotics and intestinal flora.

The US has been the first country where the GPC has created a Probiotics Scientific Board. The GPC also regularly carries out activities to raise public awareness. The goal of the 2008 launch of the Young Investigator Grant for Probiotics Research program is to contribute to the advancement of probiotics study in the US.

Groupe DANONE

DANONE is the world's leading producer of yogurt products, sold under the DANNON and DANONE brand names. Since its foundation, DANONE has built its business on product offerings, which combine health benefits and taste. DANONE RESEARCH is the organization responsible for all DANONE R&D activities (800 employees worldwide). Its mission is to formulate DANONE products with health benefits (mainly through probiotics) and the scientific evidence to support the claims for these products. It also studies the effects of food on health and aims to continuously improve the nutritional profile of DANONE products worldwide. Probiotic research is a key expertise of DANONE RESEARCH. Over the past 90 years, DANONE has built a collection of lactic bacteria strains sampled directly from bio-diversity. Referred to as the DANONE "culture-collection", it contains approximately 3,000 different lactic bacteria strains. In addition to taste and texture, some of these ferments provide probiotic health properties. Such is the case of the Bifidus DN 173 010 strain, used to produce Activia, and the Lactobacillus casei DN 114 011 strain in DanActive. Only 100 of these strains have been thoroughly studied and only 50 are currently being used in DANONE products. Therefore the "culture-collection” holds considerable potential for product innovation. DANONE RESEARCH has made it a key research area, using state-of-the-art technologies such as genomics and robotics to select the probiotic bacteria of the future.

Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd.

Yakult Honsha is one of the most established global probiotic dairy product manufacturers. Dr. Minoru Shirota, who started the company, was the pioneer in the world to culture one of the strains of lactic acid bacteria beneficial to human health called “Lactobacillus casei”. He later isolated a stronger strain of lactic acid bacteria, which would suppress the harmful bacteria living in the intestines, and help to improve and maintain the health of human beings. This led to the development of Yakult®, a fermented dairy drink, which incorporated these beneficial microorganisms.

The Probiotics bacteria L. casei Shirota and Bifidobacterium breve Yakult possess a diverse and great potential. They are the two major Probiotic bacteria out of approximately 4 thousand microorganisms that Yakult collects and maintains in house. The search and detection of new bio-makers is essential to elucidate new functions of Probiotics, and in order to clarify the effects of these Probiotics on health maintenance and pathological amelioration, our institute has conducted countless fundamental and clinical research activities. Concurrently, we are also engaged in research concerning safety of Probiotics, as well as the discovery of new Probiotics.