At CHPI Milan, 6-8 October 2026, ProBiotix Health will invite the industry to view reformulation as a commercial innovation opportunity, not simply a regulatory response. Rather than making a like-for-like ingredient replacement, brands have an opportunity to reassess the science, positioning and long-term strategy behind their cholesterol products.
“The question should not simply be what replaces Monacolin K,” said Cellan Davies, Head of Marketing at ProBiotix Health. “It should be ‘what should the next generation of cholesterol products now deliver?’ If brands simply move from one established ingredient to another, we risk recreating the same category with a different ingredient. Reformulation allows us to build something better.”
That rethink is particularly important as the cholesterol category itself evolves. Effective cholesterol management remains important, but there is an opportunity to look beyond a single biomarker and consider wider cardiometabolic health, including an emerging focus on markers such as ApoB.
At the same time, brands need to consider how their products can stand apart in a market increasingly built around commoditised ingredient propositions.
ProBiotix Health believes future cholesterol ingredients should therefore be assessed against four key criteria: regulatory confidence, clinical proof, true differentiation and future-ready formulations.
“Efficacy remains essential, but it is no longer enough on its own. Brands should be looking for ingredients with robust human evidence, a clearly understood mechanism, a strong safety and regulatory profile, and genuine differentiation that brands can build a proposition around. Those are the ingredients that are better positioned for where the category is going next,” Davies noted.
A different route to cardiometabolic innovation
For ProBiotix Health, one area of growing interest is the relationship between the gut, microbiome, the gut-heart axis, and cardiometabolic health.
This opens a new perspective for product innovation. Rather than building another cholesterol product around the same established ingredient categories, brands can explore microbiome science as a way to create new mechanisms, new product stories and broader cardiometabolic propositions.
LPLDL® is one example of how this approach can be translated into a commercial product. Purposefully identified and developed for cardiometabolic health, LPLDL® was selected from more than 4,000 microbial candidates for its high bile salt hydrolase activity.
LPLDL® works through a defined microbiome mechanism supporting cholesterol metabolism through the gut–liver axis. It is supported by multiple independent human intervention studies and has demonstrated measurable effects across key cardiometabolic biomarkers. These include total, LDL and HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (ApoB).
For brands, the opportunity is not simply to add a probiotic to a cholesterol formula. It is to build a genuinely differentiated cardiovascular or cardiometabolic proposition around microbiome science, whether reformulating an existing product or developing something entirely new.
“Microbiome science gives brands a completely different route into cardiovascular health,” Davies adds. “Rather than competing around the same established ingredient stories, there is an opportunity to build products around new mechanisms, stronger scientific differentiation and the wider relationship between the gut and cardiometabolic health. That is where we believe some of the most interesting innovation in this category will come from.”
Continue the conversation with ProBiotix Health at CPHI Milan 2026
ProBiotix Health will be exhibiting at CPHI Milan 2026 from 6-8 October at stand 16C80, Hall 16. Continue the conversation with the team around the changing cholesterol landscape, what future ingredients should deliver, reformulation opportunities and the role of microbiome science in the next generation of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic products.
To arrange a meeting with the team at CPHI, click here.
