Science Faction
Or, how to shoot for the stars using good science as a rocket.
By Anthony L. Almada
The soothsayers and psychics of the natural products industry are enjoying a healthy business in recent months. The search for the next blockbuster—the sister of SAMe, the cousin of creatine, the girlfriend of glucosamine—is weighing heavily upon the minds of both analysts and innovators. Shifting the onus back in the value chain to ingredient manufacturers and their minions (the ingredient brokers and marketers), finished product manufacturers await the clouds of prosperity to assemble overhead and pour down green-tinted rain. Doesn’t anyone do REAL R&D? Who says companies can’t adopt germane elements of the pharmaceutical research model to this business we call nutraceuticals?
The emergence and entrance of pharma-infected minds into our world is growing like The Blob; soon it may engulf small, ostensibly insignificant components of this industry and use these ingestions as the vital fuel for growth. Gone are the halcyon days of going to the biomedical library and finding a new nugget of innovation: “pirating” some scientist’s finding that tryptophan can alter sleep kinetics or red yeast rice can favorably modify blood lipids. Both private and public academic researchers (and their business offices) are hearing the whisper of the royalty stream in their ivory-laid backyard: they are seeking out the strategic marketing partners rather than waiting for an unexpected visitor to ring the entrance bell.
Lost in (lab) space robots are doing what was previously believed to be only Jules Verne-esque: screening hundreds of thousands of different biological specimens (plant, animal, microbial) and their extracts for both new chemical entities and biological activity that is disease/condition-relevant, in as short as a MONTH. What remains to be seen is whether this in vitro R&D model can produce a new star in the skies, another North Star that guides all players in the value chain (especially consumers) to its radiant human in vivo illumination? More importantly, will this research and development model create a star that persists with brilliance in the sky cluttered with space junk and Avogadro’s number of products?
A few low hanging fruits still do exist, although they have been touched, bird-pecked, worm-riddled and obscured by overgrowth. The two amino acid dipeptide carnosine (beta-alanyl-histidine) could be one of them. A quick zip through the global intellectual property space reveals a virtual one-stop shop of application offerings: cosmetic, ophthalmic, photo-protection (UV radiation), anti-aging, antioxidant, bone-growth promoter, liver protectant, immunoaugmentation, ulcer healing/preventive, mineral coordination compound (e.g. iron-carnosine chelate)…However, a fraction thereof enjoy HUMAN validation.
Carnosine entered into solid dosage forms in the U.S. in the early 1990’s, capitalizing on its presence in human skeletal muscle and its role as an antioxidant and acid buffer (to combat the temporary weakening of the muscle energetic machinery that accompanies intense exercise and lactic acid accumulation). Due to its high cost carnosine assumed a “sprinkling agent” role, delivered in amounts rarely exceeding 50-100 mg/daily recommended dose. Additional studies revealed the contribution of carnosine to human muscle biochemistry was likely insignificant. This finding was confirmed by the anemic sell-through: carnosine in these doses is non-experiential, lacking the nearly instant hummingbird stimulation of an ephedra-containing product. In essence, carnosine has disappeared. But the phoenix has embodied several products of late, garcinia cambogia/ hydroxycitrate and DHEA, for example. Could carnosine be its next host?
The visionary company would pursue novel, economically scaleable synthesis strategies, concurrent with an auditing of the IP portfolio. The plethora of application areas, many enjoying a robust body of basic and animal research, would also be audited and a strategic clinical research program be developed. Capitalization costs, guided by perspicacity and novel IP opportunity quests, would equate to no more than $15-40K. At the other end of the black box of real R&D would emerge an answer: we have (or have not) data validating the safety and efficacy of a new consumer-relevant, demographically favorable application. IP elements could be wrapped in through the integration of a proprietary botanical extract with complementary or even...Hippocrates forbid...synergistic bioactivity. Allow for 9-12 months, build a science-based launch (integrated media) platform (in the last quarter) that even Isaac Asimov would be proud of and shoot for the stars.
Or you could spend $15-40K on advertising and marketing alone, hope the product works and litter your front office walls with framed tear sheets. The science-free strategy of wrestling for consumers’ dollars like almost everybody else in the galaxy…
NW
