DuPont Water Solutions is recognized as a global leader in solving water challenges. Companies, communities, and homes around the world choose DuPont Water Solutions to help make water safer and more accessible. Our purpose of solving global challenges to transform the ability for people to thrive around the globe goes well beyond water crossing many industries and markets that count on us to solve high performance solutions to complicated separation. As a key part of DuPont’s Water business creating solutions for a more sustainable world, we recognize how we also protect people though greater access to healthcare and sources of nutrition.
Events of recent years have demonstrated the enduring importance of the Life Sciences sector, bringing it to the forefront of people’s minds. What was often an invisible industry, quietly working in the background to ensure that the wheels of daily life span uninterrupted, was thrust into the limelight in 2020 as the world clamored for new therapeutics, diagnostic kits, and vaccines to help tackle the scourge of COVID-19.
While the threat of the virus may now be waning, there remains a renewed focus on health and wellness. Now that global life expectancy has more than doubled over the past two centuries in the wake of scientific progress; the emphasis currently is on how Life Sciences can help humanity to thrive rather than merely survive.
At DuPont Water Solutions we are not only developing technologies to tackle water scarcity and purity; at our fingertips, we also have an extensive portfolio of products that are supporting the Life Sciences sector. From complex separations for drug development to crop-to-table processing solutions, we are actively working to improve the quality of life for humankind while ensuring we live in harmony with the plants and animals that share our world.
Consider the complex groundbreaking drugs that are being developed and produced today across the biopharmaceutical industry. There is a continual need for technologies that can help remove impurities with similarities to a target molecule – this is where our chromatography resins come to the fore.
Insulin is a crucial tool for controlling diabetes – more than 450 million people are living with this chronic health condition and this is expected to increase to 700 million by 2045. It is essential that we maintain the security of supply of this proven safe and effective drug that allows patients to manage their condition.
Impurities emerge during the multi-step recombinant DNA method that uses microbial hosts to produce the target polypeptide insulin molecules. Remarkably similar to the target molecule form, often only one repeating unit different in the DNA structure, these impurities pose a challenge to producing a concentrated final product.
Our chromatography resins are designed for use in capture and purification steps of downstream processing of synthetic oligonucleotides and polypeptides, such as insulin. Leveraging their innate function for separating components of a mixture we can use them to separate impurities and produce a pure and high-quality drug.
Food is hyper-regional in terms of both crop varieties and taste preferences – just about the only thing that the whole world agrees on is that we like sweet things! However, with instances of chronic diseases related to obesity, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, on the rise; food manufacturers are seeking alternative sweeteners that have lower glycemic indexes without sacrificing the taste and mouthfeel of traditional sweeteners.
Our extensive portfolio of ion exchange resins can perform a wide array of functions in the process of manufacturing sweeteners from various crops. This allows us to support the production of traditional sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup through to healthier options like allulose and tagatose, giving food and beverage manufacturers the ability to mix and match various blends of sweeteners to balance taste, mouthfeel, and calories, catering to food preferences in every corner of the world.
Milk is one of our most important forms of nutrition, consumed by communities across the globe. This complex mixture of fats, proteins, minerals, enzymes, and carbohydrates in the form of lactose, is an incredibly versatile ingredient. Accordingly, we have cultivated a portfolio of concentration and purification solutions to help separate milk components and produce additional products such as powdered milk, lactose, and whey proteins.
For example, our membrane technologies are allowing dairy processors to respond to the global megatrend of supplementing diets with alternative proteins. The demand for whey protein in early life nutrition, sprots nutrition and health foods, has effectively transformed whey generated during cheese production from a waste stream into a valuable byproduct.
Cough syrups are known to have a very bitter taste, making them quite unpalatable. This can be a barrier to patient compliance, especially among geriatric and pediatric patients where liquid medicines are sometimes the only option for patients who struggle to swallow tablets or capsules. The inherent bitterness of some active pharmaceutical ingredients cannot be masked by adding flavors or sweeteners; for decades ion exchange resin excipients have been used to safely and effectively improve the taste.
Our ion exchange resin excipients can be used in suspension formulas as they surround the active ingredient. They can mask the taste as they do not dissociate from the drug in the alkaline conditions of the mouth caused by saliva, instead slowly dissolving once they reach stomach acid. Now pediatric and elderly patients who cannot swallow tablets or capsules no longer need to endure the taste of those bitter cough syrups.
The road ahead…
There is still much work to do. At DuPont, we will continue to push the boundaries of science, harnessing the latest technological developments in the spirit of innovation. From supporting the creation of next-generation drugs and diagnostic tools to helping maximize the nutritional value of foods; our membrane technologies and polymeric resins will help our customers overcome some of the most complex separation and purification challenges.
At DuPont, we innovate to help humanity thrive – with a focus on the goals for sustainability development. Our Life Sciences team is proud to help our customers advance SDG3 toward good health and wellbeing, as well as SDG2 zero hunger.
Together we can transform lives, create opportunities for people across the globe, and ensure a bright future for humanity in a wellness-optimized world.