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Nestlé Health Science has announced a new partnership with Australia Catholic University to accelerate start-up innovation through its incubator programme in women’s health, longevity and weight management.

The partnership with the university, based in Melbourne, will bring together researchers and start-up companies on campus with the goal of transforming nutrition and health research into innovative and scalable solutions.

Leonidas Karagounis, a researcher in human nutrition science and metabolism at Australia Catholic University’s Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, established and will lead the incubator programme.

Karagounis has more than two decades experience investigating the effect of nutrition and lifestyle across the human lifespan. He described the initiative as a “game changer” for the next generation of health science leaders in Australia.

“This strategic partnership with Nestlé Health Science is a fantastic opportunity that will help drive innovation in nutrition and health research into real-world impact,” Karagounis commented.

This partnership follows another academic partnership between Nestlé and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Innovation Institute for Food & Health (IIFH), announced last month.

Nestlé Health Science and UC Davis’ IIFH will leverage their combined expertise to help address critical health challenges such as healthy ageing, women’s health, metabolic health, gastrointestinal conditions and disease-specific areas including chronic kidney disease, oncology and pediatric health.

Hans Manning, vice president of innovation and strategy at the R&D centre for Nestlé Health Science in New Jersey, US, said: “The strategic partnerships with the universities allow us to work with entrepreneurs to help them bring highly differentiated products to the market in three key areas: women's health, healthy longevity and weight management”.

“The ultimate aim is to provide science-based, groundbreaking nutritional solutions to advance the health status of consumers and patients.”

Nestlé also recently announced the third edition of its Innovation Challenge with the Food & Nutrition Innovation Institute at the Gerald J and Dorothy R Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Massachusetts, focusing on women's health intersecting with healthy longevity. Winners will receive support from Nestlé Health Science and Tufts University to drive their innovations.