Last week’s headlines included the International Probiotics Association (IPA) opening a new Shanghai office, concerns over imported melatonin products in Australia, the return of NMN supplements to Amazon US, and the winners of the 2025 Healthspan Innovators.
The International Probiotics Association (IPA) has officially opened its China office located in Shanghai. This is the first office that IPA has set up in Asia-Pacific.
George Paraskevakos, IPA’s executive director, said that the new office responds to growing membership of Chinese companies, as well as to set up a touch point in Asia-Pacific (APAC)—which is the region with the biggest probiotic market.
“APAC is the biggest region in probiotics, and within that region, China is the biggest market and is growing at a very nice rate,” Paraskevakos said during an interview at Vitafoods Asia 2025 in Bangkok.
“We had a lot of increase in membership. Today, we have almost 29 member companies in China and APAC, mostly coming from China.”
Examples of its China member companies are Angel Yeast, Wecare Probiotics Co., NutriWow and Shanghai Novanat Co., Ltd.
“As such, we need someone here to focus on the membership growth and to help leverage what we’ve put up for the industry,” Paraskevakos said. “Since it’s the biggest market, we have make sure that we have a representative to address companies that may want to join our membership.”
The China office is represented by Dr. Dan Cheng.
Several melatonin supplements imported into Australia were found to contain amounts that were either significantly higher or lower than the amount labeled, according to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
Eight out of 18 inspected products had significantly higher amounts of melatonin, while three had significantly less than the amount labeled. Most of these melatonin products came from U.S. brands. One product contained no melatonin in any of the 10 units tested, despite label claims of 10 mg.
The 18 imported products were intercepted at the Australian border between January and September this year on suspicion that they were substandard or falsified.
The TGA tested these products by measuring the actual average content of melatonin, as compared to the labeled amount, and the variation in the content across individual dosage units.
“The results indicate significant discrepancies in the actual melatonin content compared to the labeled amounts,” the regulator stated in the safety advisory.
“One product contained more than 400% of the labeled content and another containing no melatonin at all. This variability in melatonin content raises serious safety concerns for consumers, including the risk of hospitalization and accidental overdose, especially in children.”
After a two-year hiatus, NMN dietary supplements are back on Amazon following the FDA’s recent conclusion that the vitamin B3 form is lawful for use in dietary supplements.
In response to a Citizen Petition from the Natural Products Association (NPA) and the Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH) on the status of NMN, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently stated that it had revised its interpretation of the race-to-market clause (that an ingredient that is first a drug cannot then become a dietary ingredient).
The news was welcomed by NPA and ANH-USA as a victory for NMN, with Daniel Fabricant, PhD, NPA president and CEO calling on e-commerce platforms to immediately restore NMN products to the market. Amazon removed NMN dietary supplements from its virtual shelves at the start of 2023, but several different NMN dietary supplements are now available on Amazon.
To celebrate the first ever Nutra Healthspan Summit, NutraIngredients will showcase three different but complimentary perspectives with its first cohort of Healthspan Innovators.
The start-ups making waves in the health and longevity space that will be recognized at the event next month are SRW, NemaLife and Grontvedt Biotech. All three will present their business to a global audience at the Nutra Healthspan Summit in London.
Texas-based start-up NemaLife is a bio-intelligence company that uses microscopic worms, known as C. elegans, to speed up research and quickly discover the functional benefits of bioactive ingredients.
Established in 2022, Grontvedt Biotech is a Norwegian biotechnology company and a spin-off of the Grontvedt Group. The biotechnology arm is focused on CETO3, a fish oil ingredient which is naturally rich in omega-11, or cetoleic acid, a fatty acid naturally found in herring.
SRW Laboratories is a New Zealand-based biotechnology company which offers a range of products designed to support healthy aging and cellular health. Founded in 2020 with the tagline “You have two ages. You can change one”, the company’s purpose is to challenge the way that people think about and experience aging, as well as creating products which tackle the key hallmarks.
