Stick to one field and focus if you want to be successful.
This was the message from Professor Leon Dicks, Distinguished Professor in Microbiology at Stellenbosch University, who has studied lactic acid bacteria for the past 40 years. He is also the inventor of the Entiro probiotic brand, developed through award-winning research, which has been commercialised by Cipla. It is now one of South Africa’s fastest growing and most prescribed probiotics, attracting a turnover of over R50 million yearly in the South African marketplace.
Although the antimicrobial and preservative properties of lactic acid bacteria have been known for a while, Dicks and his team were among the first in the world to use two of these specific bacteria, a patented strain combination of Lactobacillus plantarum and Enterococcus mundtii, to fight infections in both humans and animals.