Helaina swept its category at SupplySide Global 2026. On October 28, Dan DeMarino pitched effera®, Helaina's human-identical lactoferrin, on the Innovation Stage at Mandalay Bay, and the ingredient won both the judges' top prize and the audience choice award in Ingredient Idol's biotics category.[1]
Helaina just swept its category at SupplySide Global 2026. effera®, its human-identical lactoferrin, won both the judges' prize and the audience vote in Ingredient Idol's biotics category, beating out two probiotics.
The win capped a full week for the precision fermentation company. Helaina arrived in Las Vegas with six active clinical trials studying effera® in women, a new review on lactoferrin and healthy aging, and effera® gummies for booth visitors to sample. Off the show floor, it co-hosted a Topgolf event with fellow ingredient supplier Saanroo.
Last year, we recapped Helaina's booth through three effera® product concepts in our SupplySide Global 2025 recap. This year's recap starts on stage.
Ingredient Idol: effera® Takes the Biotics Crown
Now in its sixth year, Ingredient Idol starts with SupplySide Supplement Journal (SSJ) editors picking three finalists in each of three categories, who then pitch live on stage.[2] This year's categories were adaptogens, biotics, and longevity. Judges Diana Morgan, Doug Lynch, and David Foreman picked each winner, the audience voted by applause for its own favorite, and SSJ editor Devon Gholam emceed.
Two Probiotics and a Protein
On paper, the biotics lineup made effera® the odd one out. Its competition came from two probiotics: Biohm Technologies' Ascomya PK88, a genome-sequenced strain of the probiotic yeast Pichia kluyveri, and Maypro's CLB101, a butyrate-producing strain of Anaerostipes caccae.[2]
A lactoferrin protein beat them both. DeMarino, Helaina's VP of Commercial and a guest on Episode #180 of the PricePlow Podcast, built his pitch around what precision fermentation now makes possible:
"We are at a new frontier in human health."[1]
-- Dan DeMarino
His argument was that precision fermentation opens the door to human bioactive proteins the industry couldn't produce before. effera® is the first one Helaina has brought to market, and its amino acid sequence is identical to that of native human lactoferrin.[3]
The Case Behind the Pitch
Helaina Booth at SupplySide Global 2026. (Image courtesy of Helaina)
Why would a protein compete in biotics? The research suggests much of effera®'s gut activity runs through the microbiome.
The human evidence comes from a randomized, double-blind trial in 66 healthy adults. Over 28 days, effera® at 0.34g or 3.4g per day maintained microbial diversity while shifting the gut community toward potentially beneficial taxa (including Faecalibacterium at the higher dose) and proportionally increasing acetate.[4] These microbiome results are still exploratory and hypothesis-generating, but they're still incredibly exciting in this space.
The mechanistic evidence comes from the ex vivo gut model work first presented at ISSN 2026, which we broke down in our ISSN 2026 gut barrier report. The full manuscript is currently posted as a preprint,[5] so it hasn't completed peer review. In it, intact effera® didn't significantly strengthen intestinal barrier cells on its own. The benefit appeared after gut microbes fermented the protein, and those fermentation products consistently produced stronger barrier responses than bovine lactoferrin's did at matched doses.
Safety data rounds out the case. In the same 66-person trial, effera® didn't raise anti-lactoferrin antibodies at either dose, while bovine lactoferrin roughly tripled antibodies against the bovine protein,[6] a result we covered in our alloimmunization deep dive. In September 2026, Helaina researchers added a preclinical package: effera® showed no genotoxicity in two standard assays, and juvenile rats dosed from postnatal day 7 through day 98 tolerated up to 5,000mg/kg/day, the highest dose tested.[7] The authors say those results support safety from birth to adulthood, which fits the early-life nutrition collaboration Helaina announced with Nestlé in June (see our Nestlé partnership coverage).
Helaina's Six Clinical Trials in Women
Helaina's longer-term bet is in the clinic. The company points to a persistent gap in how often women are included in nutrition trials, and it's running six active clinical trials studying effera® across the female health experience: menstrual comfort, iron status, vaginal microbiome health, hair and skin, and menopause.[8]
Laura Katz, Helaina's Founder and CEO and a guest on Episode #167 and Episode #197 of the PricePlow Podcast, tied the program back to where lactoferrin comes from:
"The pinnacle of human nutrition starts and ends with breast milk."[9]
-- Laura Katz
Ahead of the show, Katz said data from the six trials was starting to come in, and she pointed to 14 peer-reviewed papers already behind the ingredient.[9] Here's the published groundwork behind each research area.
Lit shelves hold finished goods already running effera, including gummies, stick packs, capsules, and a tub. (Image courtesy of Helaina)
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Iron Status
Iron is where effera®'s published human data runs deepest. In a 2026 case series, two active women with persistently low iron, who had responded poorly to standard oral iron or couldn't tolerate it, took 100mg of effera® daily for 6 to 20 weeks. Both showed notable ferritin increases, one also had marked gains in serum iron and transferrin saturation, and both reported better energy without gastrointestinal issues.[10] Two cases can't establish efficacy, and the authors call for controlled trials. The iron status trial should give a much clearer picture.
For more on how lactoferrin supports iron balance, see our guide to iron and women's health and our coverage of new guidelines setting the adult ferritin cutoff at 30ng/mL.
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Menstrual Comfort
Menstruation brings recurring iron loss, and cycle-focused brands have already put effera® to work. Amulet Daily Cycle Support pairs 125mg effera® with 3g of creatine in a gummy, a pairing we explored in Formulator's Corner #18. A menstrual comfort trial would add direct clinical data to a category where effera® is already on shelves.
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Vaginal Microbiome Health
Lactoferrin's microbiome story doesn't stop at the gut. A 2021 review of lactoferrin research in pregnancy, most of it using bovine lactoferrin, describes effects on genital tract microbiota as well as intestinal microbiota.[11] Helaina's trial studies effera® in vaginal microbiome health directly.
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Hair and Skin
The booth screen puts bovine lactoferrin's roughly 70% amino acid match next to effera's 100%. (Image courtesy of Helaina)
This may be the most novel arm of the program. In May 2026, Helaina scientist Nicole Kaplan co-authored what the authors describe as the first focused review of lactoferrin in skin and hair biology, connecting its roles in local iron regulation, oxidative stress, and tissue repair to skin and hair outcomes. The review also found no well-controlled human trials testing lactoferrin for hair-focused outcomes.[12] Helaina's trial is set to add human data where that review found none.
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Menopause and Healthy Aging
Menopause rounds out the list, and Helaina also brought its newest later-life research to the booth.[13] Published in Nutrients in October 2026 and co-authored by Helaina researchers, the review examines lactoferrin's role in healthy aging across four connected systems: gut integrity, immune function, iron regulation, and mitochondrial function. The authors are upfront that much of the mechanistic evidence is still preclinical, and they call for well-designed trials in older adults.[14]
Topgolf, Gummies, and a Packed Schedule
Visitors to Booth #2572 could sample effera® gummies developed with partners at OrganoLeaf, an Orlando-based manufacturer of custom and white-label nutraceutical gummies.
After hours, Helaina co-hosted a Topgolf event with its friends at Saanroo. Saanroo is the nutraceutical business spun out of Gencor during SupplySide Global 2025, and women's health and longevity are two of its four focus pillars, the same two areas Helaina spent the week discussing.
Between Topgolf, booth interviews, customer meetings, lunches, and dinners, Helaina's team described a week with almost no downtime. The most useful signal came from those meetings. According to Helaina, brand teams sought out effera® already thinking about formulas, scale, and where human lactoferrin fits in their product pipelines.
The Other 2026 Winners
The adaptogen title went to Xeya Modern Shatavari, made by Laila Nutra, which also took both the judges' and audience votes.[1] Longtime readers may recognize Xeya: it shared a formula with effera® and Freemen Nutra's Memo-Q in the menopause-focused Brain Fog Chocolate concept at Helaina's 2025 booth, which we covered in Formulator's Corner #20.
In longevity, the audience vote ended in a three-way tie, and the judges gave the title to PLT Health Solutions' Kinexa Joint Longevity Complex, the groundbreaking MRI-studied joint ingredient.
What to Watch in 2027
Helaina's team called that brand interest "further proof that 2027 will be the year of human lactoferrin". Three things will test the prediction: results from the six women's health trials, the gut barrier manuscript's path through peer review, and the early-life work with Nestlé.
Congratulations to Dan DeMarino, Laura Katz, and the whole Helaina team on the Ingredient Idol sweep. Brands that missed them in Las Vegas can connect through Helaina's website or its LinkedIn page.
We'll cover the trial results as they publish. Sign up for Helaina and effera® alerts so each one lands in your inbox:
