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. 2024 Jan 27;16(3):380.
doi: 10.3390/nu16030380.

The History and Prediction of Prebiotics and Postbiotics: A Patent Analysis

Tao Zang  1   2 , Lu Han  1   2 , Zhaoxiang Lu  1   2 , Lulu Tan  1   2 , Dunsheng Liang  1   2 , Xiaofan Shen  1   2 , Xiaoping Liao  1   2   3 , Yahong Liu  1   2   3 , Hao Ren  1   2   3 , Jian Sun  1   2   3
Affiliations

The History and Prediction of Prebiotics and Postbiotics: A Patent Analysis

Tao Zang et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Prebiotics and postbiotics have gained attention as functional food additives due to their substantial influence on the gut microbiome and potential implications for human health on a broader scale. In addition, the number of patents for these additives has also increased, yet their functional classification has been problematic. In this study, we classified 2215 patents granted from 2001 to 2020 by functionality to enable predictions of future development directions. These patents encompassed subjects as diverse as feed supplementation, regulation of intestinal homeostasis, prevention of gastrointestinal ailments, targeted drug administration and augmentation of drug potency. The progression of patents issued during this time frame could be divided into three phases: occasional accounts prior to 2001, a period from 2001 to 2013 during which an average of 42 patents were issued annually, followed by a surge exceeding 140 patents annually after 2013. The latter increase has indicated that pre- and post-biotics have been recognized as biologically relevant. Patent mining therefore can enable forecasts of the future trajectory of these biologics and provide insights to evaluate their advancement. Moreover, this research is the first attempt to generalize and predict the directions of prebiotics and postbiotics using patent information and offers a comprehensive perspective for the potential utilization of prebiotics and postbiotics across a wide variety of fields.

Keywords: gut microbiota; patent analysis; postbiotics; prebiotics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Global distribution of total prebiotic and postbiotic patents from 2001 to 2020. (a) Application by country (b) Annual patent distribution (c) Annual trends of patent applications.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Geographical distribution of prebiotic and postbiotic patent applications. (a) Heat map estimated from quantitative data of the patent distribution from the primary countries of patent technologies of prebiotics and postbiotics globally (b) Patent application technology; country of origin inventor location (c) Technology applications in technologically advanced countries (d) Distribution of inventions and creations from China to overseas patents (e) Ranking of patent numbers from provinces and cities in China. Abbreviation: American (US), China (CN), Japan (JP), Germany (DE), France (FR), Ireland (IE), Australia (AU), Switzerland (CH), European Patent Office (EP), Spain (ES), Denmark (DK), Great Britain (GB), Belgium (BE), Canada (CA), South Korea (KR), Netherlands (NL), Italy (IT), Albania (AL), Sweden (SE).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Patent applicant analysis. (a) Ranking and distribution of prebiotics and postbiotics applications in global companies and individuals (b) Number of patent applications, grants and global marked competitiveness. The x-axis represents technology competitiveness, while the y-axis represents strong economic strength.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Analysis of prebiotics and postbiotics relevant patents. (a) Metabolite- related patents of prebiotics and postbiotics represented by word cloud (b) Correlations between metabolites related patents and prebiotics and postbiotics represented by text clustering (c) Correlations between delivery material related patents and prebiotics and postbiotics using text clustering.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Relevant factor analysis of prebiotics. (a) Association between prebiotics and the indicated areas (b) Multi-level relationships between prebiotics and postbiotics and other metabolites.
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