Allergosan

Allergosan, formally Institut AllergoSan, is a family-run Austrian company based in Graz that develops products from natural substances such as probiotic bacteria, plant extracts and minerals. It was founded in January 1991 [2]. Most of its business today lies in probiotic food supplements, chiefly the OMNi-BiOTiC range, but its roots are in skin: the institute's first customers were largely people living with eczema and psoriasis, and skincare has stayed a smaller line alongside the supplements.

The company is closely tied to the Frauwallner family. Pharmacist Friedrich Frauwallner stood at the start of the project, and Anita Frauwallner has led the institute since 1992; her son Bernd Assinger joined the management in 2012. In 2025 Allergosan returned to its dermatological beginnings with OMNi-BiOTiC SKiN, a probiotic skincare line for eczema-prone skin sold through pharmacies.

According to the company's own history, Institut AllergoSan grew out of an idea shared by 20 physicians. They needed foods and medicines that were "allergologically clean" for their patients, and they turned to Friedrich Frauwallner, a pharmacist in Graz, for help [2]. Most of the institute's early customers had struggled for years with chronic skin conditions, above all neurodermatitis (atopic eczema) and psoriasis, and the company says many of them found relief through its products.

Accounts differ on who should be called the founder. The company's history page describes the physicians' idea and the pharmacist they enlisted, and states that Anita Frauwallner took over leadership in 1992; it does not use the word "founder" for anyone. Other accounts give the title to Anita Frauwallner. The Austrian business publication LEADERSNET described her in 2025 as the institute's founder and head [11], and a 2023 company press release called her "founder and director" [12].

Anita Frauwallner came to the field from an unusual direction. She began her career at the University of Graz, where she studied linguistics and worked as a university assistant, before training in integrative medicine and microbiome research out of personal interest. The company says this interest began with a personal blow of fate. She also worked as a medical journalist and owned one of the oldest pharmacies in Graz, which she ran together with her husband. The company credits the daily contact with customers in that shared pharmacy for its early conviction that skin problems are best treated "from inside and outside".

Under Anita Frauwallner, the institute moved towards the idea that a person's health depends to a large extent on healthy digestion. From 1993 it sold its first probiotics alongside allergen-free foods and orthomolecular supplements, meaning vitamin and nutrient preparations. Two years later, in 1995, the first probiotic under the OMNi-BiOTiC name appeared [10]. The company does not treat the two dates as a contradiction: 1993 marks its first probiotics in general, 1995 the first under the brand that would later carry most of its business.

The skin side of the business had its own early success. The institute developed a skincare series called JAVACELL for neurodermatitis and psoriasis, which the company counts among its notable achievements of that period.

The Frauwallners sold their pharmacy at the end of 2001, and Anita Frauwallner turned more fully to research. According to her company biography, the institute had been run for its first ten years mainly out of personal scientific interest. That changed from 2002, when larger research cooperations began with two university hospitals in the Netherlands [3]. They produced studies on multi-species probiotics for diarrhoea linked to antibiotics and on allergy prevention during pregnancy, which were published in 2008 and 2009.

In the following years the institute became, in its own description, an international centre of competence that initiated and ran more than 25 research projects with scientists in Austria and abroad. The family element grew stronger in 2012, when Bernd Assinger, Anita Frauwallner's son, joined the management.

By 2023 the OMNi-BiOTiC brand comprised sixteen probiotics formulated for different uses, and the company said it was sold in more than 40 countries. A 2023 company release also cited IQVIA market data to claim that the brand had climbed from sixth place among probiotic brands worldwide in 2021 to third [12]; this ranking is the company's own reading of the data and has not been independently confirmed.

Several visible steps followed. In 2024 OMNi-BiOTiC opened a flagship store in Vienna, and in the same period Anita Frauwallner received the Austrian professional title of professor for her decades of work in microbiome research, as LEADERSNET reported [11]. In March 2025 the company presented OMNi-BiOTiC SKiN at a press conference. On 30 June 2026 the company announced that OMNi-BiOTiC had become a partner of the Austrian Tennis Federation (ÖTV).

Allergosan describes itself as a family-run company from Graz. No outside owner or parent group is documented, and no acquisitions are recorded. Anita Frauwallner leads the business as chief executive, with her son Bernd Assinger as managing director; Christian Gsöll was named in 2023 as director of business development.

The company calls its approach holistic and preventive. Its stated aim is to strengthen people's basic health before illness develops, using what nature provides. In its own words, its goal is to develop scientific innovations that serve the whole person and bring nature into the healing process.

A healthy gut sits at the centre of this vision. On its website Allergosan writes that the future belongs to probiotic medicine and expresses the hope that timely prevention with natural means could one day prevent much illness, leaving conventional chemical medicine for the seriously ill. Its German-language tagline, "Mit gutem 'Bauchgefühl' durch das Leben", plays on the word for gut feeling.

The company presents itself through three short points: a centre of competence for microbiome research, quality described as "our DNA", and a family business from Graz. Allergosan says it avoids lactose, yeast and gluten in its products wherever possible, a policy that traces back to its origins in allergy-friendly foods.

Most of Allergosan's range is not beauty. Its main lines are the OMNi-BiOTiC probiotics and related OMNi-BiOTiC ranges for fibre, nutrients and pets, the META-CARE nutrient products, the papaya-based Caricol, and Dr. med. Schütze dental care. Skin remains a smaller but long-standing part of the business.

The historic JAVACELL series was the institute's first notable skincare. Today the company's skin products include the AllergoSan Intensiv Creme, presented as special care for the skin, and the OMNi-BiOTiC SKiN line launched in 2025. That line includes an intensive skin bath and an intensive care ointment, both containing bacterial strains selected for eczema. LEADERSNET reported that the line would be sold in pharmacies.

Coverage of the launch, which featured dermatologist Michaela Axt-Gadermann, described the skin as a complex organ hosting more than 1,000 bacterial species. It pointed to Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that can also cause serious infections, as a frequent reason that eczema fails to heal. Study figures presented with the launch reported that dry skin clearly improved in 86 percent of participants and that scaling decreased in 60 percent [11]. These figures come from the company's own presentation.

On quality, the company says its bacterial strains are identified and classified by NIZO Food Research, an independent organisation in Amsterdam. It also says the strains are held in a safe deposit at the DSMZ, the German collection of microorganisms and cell cultures [6].

Research is central to how Allergosan describes itself. Its two best-known studies came out of the Dutch hospital partnerships. The first, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in 2008, examined probiotics for diarrhoea associated with antibiotics. The company says the World Gastroenterology Organisation later chose it as one of the 12 best and most relevant studies in microbiome research [6]. The second, known as the PANDA study, examined probiotics during pregnancy to prevent allergies and appeared in the journal ALLERGY in 2009 [5].

The company names further research links. It takes part in four studies within CBmed, a large Austrian biomarker research project, and supports four microbiome projects at the Medical University of Graz. It is also a long-standing member of the international foundation "Gutflora in Health and Disease" and supports its work. Ongoing research areas listed on its website include the gut-brain axis, the gut-liver axis, the female microbiome, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, and Alzheimer's dementia.

The company's sustainability work takes the form of charitable projects rather than product claims. Allergosan says it funded the construction of 360 small earth structures in Tanzania that capture rainwater [7]. It also supports protection of the Dürrenstein-Lassingtal wilderness area. The organic papayas for Caricol come from a cultivation project in Sri Lanka that began as a development aid initiative.

Allergosan is active. Its press page carried releases through 2026, the most recent dated 15 September 2026 under the title "Innovation aus der Mikrobiomforschung" (innovation from microbiome research) [8]. The company operates across several regions, with websites in German, French, Italian and English editions, and continues to be run by the Frauwallner family from Graz.