PURCHASE, N.Y. — PepsiCo and Senomyx Inc. have formed a four-year collaboration to discover, develop and market new sweet-flavor ingredients with the goal of creating healthier beverages.

The food and beverage giant said Tuesday that the alliance will leverage Senomyx’s sweet-taste technology to formulate sweet enhancers and natural, high-potency sweeteners to bring to the marketplace lower-calorie, great-tasting PepsiCo beverages.

"This relationship with Senomyx reflects our increasingly long-term approach to research and development as well as our belief that global food and beverage companies can play an important role in identifying new ingredients that can lead to healthier products," commented Mehmood Khan, PepsiCo’s chief scientific officer.

"The real challenge is to create products that not only are healthier but also taste great, and Senomyx has unique technologies that will allow us to improve the nutritional profile of our products without sacrificing taste," Khan noted.  "We’re very optimistic that this collaboration will help us achieve our commitment to reduce added sugar per serving by 25% in key brands in key markets over the next decade and ultimately help people around the world live healthier lives."

PepsiCo said it will have exclusive rights to the Senomyx sweet-flavor ingredients developed under the collaboration for use in nonalcoholic beverages. Under the agreement, Senomyx will receive an upfront payment of $30 million from PepsiCo, $7.5 million of which was paid previously. Senomyx also will be entitled to $32 million in committed research and development payments over the four-year research period.

In addition, PepsiCo retains the option to extend the research collaboration for two more years,. Senomyx also will be eligible for milestone payments based on the achievement of predetermined goals as well as royalty payments.

"We are looking forward to working with PepsiCo on our common objective of developing products that meet the growing demand for lower-calorie offerings," stated Kent Snyder, chief executive officer of San Diego-based Senomyx. "PepsiCo is an industry leader with its commitment to reducing added sugar in key global beverage brands, and we are particularly excited about expanding our research efforts for the discovery of enhancers of sweeteners such as sucrose and fructose and the identification of new natural, high-potency sweeteners that would allow Senomyx to provide PepsiCo with a broad spectrum of sweet- taste options."