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Novella launches potent whole-cell strawberry ingredient at SSW
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Thursday, 18 September, 2025, 14 : 00 PM [IST]
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Modi’in, Israel
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Biotech start-up Novella Innovative Technology Ltd., announced the launch of its Novella Strawberry a patent-pending, new generation of bioactives derived from whole strawberry cells. This natural complex represents the first fruits of its collection of fruit-cell nutraceutical solutions. This powerful ingredient sets a new standard for efficacy, bioavailability, and sustainability. The company will introduce it at SupplySide West 2025, in Las Vegas, Booth #815.
Leveraging its proprietary AuraCell technology, it has pioneered the precision cultivation of botanical ingredients, bypassing the need to grow the whole plant. The company cultivates valuable phytonutrients directly from the plant cells in a closed, controlled environment. The result is a pure, powerful bioactive ingredient with guaranteed consistency and zero waste, while slashing resource use by 99%, including water, land and labour.
Unlike standard strawberry extracts that isolate a limited subset of compounds, it is a whole-cell matrix that captures and preserves the full complexity of the fruit. This matrix delivers natural synergy and maximum performance in a reproducible format.
Shimrit Bar-El, co-founder and chief product officer for Novella, said, “We collect the high value nutrients from the strawberry at the peak of its power, grow them in a clean environment without pesticides, then amplify them. The result is a potent compound that can easily be absorbed in the body.”
The innovative ingredient delivers an antioxidant punch up to 100 times stronger than conventional strawberry extracts, as demonstrated in human-cell assays via measuring ROS inhibition. It maintains the naturally occurring strawberry cell composition. This exceptional potency enables the use of significantly lower concentrations.
In addition to their strong antioxidant power, strawberries contain a broad spectrum of bioactive compounds, including not only the well-known anthocyanins but also ellagic acid, phenolic acids, terpenoids, and alkaloids. While conventional products focus mainly on the anthocyanin group, the strawberry’s much wider array of naturally occurring compounds remains underutilised. However, its unique richness has spurred a renewed growth of strawberries and other berries within the nutraceutical market, with rising demand in categories such as metabolism, weight management, beauty-from-within, and healthy ageing.
Despite its high wellness value and strong consumer interest, the integration of strawberry ingredients into supplements remains challenging. The poor stability of their bioactives makes it difficult to guarantee consistent and standardised dosing, while common industrial processing methods lead to significant nutrient loss.
Strawberries are highly climate sensitive. Their beneficial compounds degrade rapidly when exposed to heat, light, oxygen, and time. Moreover, agricultural production requires heavy irrigation and delivers variable yields of both fruit and its concentrated actives.
These limitations restrict strawberry extracts to complementary roles in supplements, driving shortages, low extraction yields, and higher costs. Its proprietary AuraCell technology directly addresses these challenges by cultivating intact strawberry cells in controlled environments free from seasonal constraints. It also unlocks broader applications across the nutraceutical and functional food industries.
Itay Dana, co-founder and chief business development officer for Novella, said, “Our solution will significantly relieve the bottleneck in the nutraceutical industry’s growing demand for strawberry-sourced nutrients while leaving field grown strawberries to be enjoyed as refreshing natural treats. Our AuraCell platform doesn’t extract and doesn’t need solvents. We preserve nature’s full intelligence and deliver it intact. Novella Strawberry answers the consumer demand for performance and sustainability by delivering a holistic ingredient that is pure, potent, and generates zero waste.”
The benefits of anthocyanins, the antioxidant flavonoid compounds commonly used in berry-based products, are typically acquired via digestion, microbial breakdown, and the variable gut environments. This leads to low, inconsistent bioavailability. It delivers these phytochemicals and other fast-acting bioactives directly within plant cells. Bioreactor-cultivated bioactives remain in their native cellular environment, acting as a form of natural microencapsulation. This shields sensitive compounds from oxidative stress and degradation within a formulation. It also preserves full-spectrum bioavailability and bioactivity while enabling them to work in synergy with other actives, enhancing their performance.
“Novella Strawberry is exactly what the next wave of dietary supplements needs. It performs powerfully on its own, but its real potential is in enhancing other products—amplifying results while reducing required daily dose. It’s a perfect marriage of science and strategy, with remarkable commercial potential,” concluded Dana.
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