"Nestlé's cash and know-how really make it a powerful machine," says Jean-Marie L'Home, an analyst
at Aurel in Paris. "Nestlé will probably be the leader in this category within the next few years."
The new unit will include Nestlé's existing nutrition business, which
had sales of $1.6 billion last year. It is also creating the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences, which will be based at research partner Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne,
Switzerland.
The company says it will invest hundreds of millions of francs over the next decade in the research project, which will be led by Emmanuel Baetge, former chief scientific officer of ViaCyte, which is developing diabetes treatments from stem cells.
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