One more setback for Phytopharm – Uniliver returned the Patent on Hoodia Back to Phytopharm.
Background: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa’s national laboratory, identified the P57, the only molecule having appetite suppressing property. Later in 1995 CSIR obtained a patent right on the P57 molecules for their usage in diet industry. They licensed the patent to Phytopharm UK.
In 1998, Phytopharm sub-licensed the rights to Pfizer, the US pharmaceutical giant for the development and global commercialization of P57. But Pfizer returned the rights to hoodia to Phytopharm in 2003, as they found producing diet products by isolating Hoodia Gordonii’s P57 unfeasible. Read complete CSIR-Phytopharm-Pfizer story
Phytopharm and Uniliver – Collaboration ends
In late 2004, Phytopharm collaborated with Uniliver to produce diet products with extracted Hoodia P57 molecules. The diet industry was expecting the first Hoodia extract product from them.
There is not even a single hoodia extract product on the market now as it amounts to violation of patent. Read Hoodia P57 Patent for details.
But unfortunately, this collaboration also failed and ended. On 12th December 2008, Uniliver returned the patent rights back to Phytopharm. Read the press release by Phytopharm.
Uniliver was conducting a clinical study of using Hoodia P57 extract in drink based product. It is said that the test results made Uniliver to decide the project unfeasible and unsuitable which led them to terminate the contract with Phytopharm.
Now Phytopharm is in search of another product developer to collaborate with. So we can not expect any Hoodia Extract product to the market for next few years.