First batch in China
On August 5, 2024, the National Health Commission issued the Announcement on 8 "Three-New Foods" including Arabinoxylan. N-acetylglucosamine declared by Shandong Runde Biotechnology Co., Ltd. was approved as a new food ingredient, making the company the first and currently the only Chinese domestic enterprise to obtain this approval.
N-Acetylglucosamine (NAG) is a monosaccharide in organisms that widely exists in bacteria, yeasts, molds, plants and animals. Especially in the human body, it serves as a synthetic precursor of the disaccharide unit of glycosaminoglycans, and plays an important role in repairing and maintaining the functions of cartilage and joint tissues. Therefore, NAG is widely used in health foods and nutritional supplements abroad, exerting a significant effect in the field of bone and joint health. In addition, NAG has immunoregulatory functions: it can regulate the activity of immune cells, promote the phagocytosis of macrophages, enhance the body’s immunity, and provide a certain protective effect against infections and tumors. In the cosmetics industry, NAG also has many applications. It can promote the synthesis of hyaluronic acid and collagen, help maintain skin elasticity and moisture, and improve skin dryness and aging problems.
The approval of NAG as a new food ingredient indicates that its edible safety and status as a food ingredient have been recognized by the National Health Commission. This has further broadened the application scenarios of NAG. Previously, NAG had been used in cosmetics in China. The approval as a new food ingredient also marks that NAG has entered an era of "cosmetics and food from the same source", providing consumers with more health options.
Founded in 2014, Runde Biotechnology is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in the R&D, manufacturing and solution services of biological products. Its core products include N-acetylglucosamine, glucosamine hydrochloride, glucosamine sulfate, etc., which are widely used in functional foods, health foods, biomedicine, beauty and daily chemicals, animal nutrition and other fields. The company has successively won honors and qualifications such as National Model Enterprise of Single Champion in Manufacturing, National Green Factory, National Intellectual Property Model Enterprise, and National Model Enterprise of Green Design for Industrial Products. It is the first drafting unit of China’s first industrial standard for glucosamine and the first development unit of the first international standard sample for glucosamine. In 2024, the project Key Technologies and Application of Efficient Breeding and Optimization of Food Biomanufacturing Industrial Strains, completed as a major participating unit, won the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award.
