Plenty of people take vitamins and other dietary supplements. But how many of us really know what goes into them? Or why we take them in the first place?
The process for developing these dietary supplements is much different than prescription medication. Companies creating supplements or other "functional foods" will often use chemical analysis to assess the purity of their ingredients, but that's it. Some opt for clinical trials, but not often because they are expensive.
Ultimately, there's a big gap in the product development process.
Canomiks, a Minnesota-based life sciences and wellness startup, aims to help these businesses. It works with companies in a broad range of industries like nutrition to make sure their natural remedies are ethically and efficiently made.
"Companies spend more money on marketing than science," CEO Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk told Minne Inno. "Science is not the focus. But we want to change that and make food as medicine a reality."
There's often confusion surrounding the process of creating supplements. Which ingredient does what? How much is necessary to achieve the desired effects? And how do we find these ingredients in the first place?
"Times are changing and we have to provide real science behind alternative therapies."
People sourcing the ingredients also need to know the right time to harvest them, how the nutrients should be extracted and more. But according to Canomiks, the work is worth it.
"Times are changing and we have to provide real science behind alternative therapies," Pradhan-Nabzdyk said.
Canomiks says it helps nutrition companies with the sourcing and science behind supplement products and does so using genomics, bioinformatics and an AI-based technology platform called GeneTune.
GeneTune allows manufacturers, marketers and ingredient suppliers to identify genomic relationships between ingredients and which ingredients they should use to target certain conditions.
"Every time we did a project for a company, there was a question about ingredients," Pradhan-Nabzdyk said. "There's no point in creating a formulation if you don't know what is going into it. So we help them by running tests for the biological effects of ingredients."
The company was founded by a group of three scientists in Cambridge, Mass., in 2015. Pradhan-Nabzdyk received a PhD in pharmacology and has taught at Harvard Medical School for nearly 15 years.
Both Pradhan-Nabzdyk and another co-founder, Manoj Bhasin, grew up in India. She said natural ingredients like turmeric and ginger were common remedies for things like stomach aches while growing up.
"We never thought growing up about the science behind these things, but now we have these tools to evaluate this knowledge from a biotech and pharma perspective," Pradhan-Nabzdyk said.
Pradhan-Nabzdyk moved from Cambridge to Rochester in 2019 and is currently in the process of moving Canomik's operations to southeastern Minnesota. She is actively looking for lab space and plans to completely move the company in the next few months.
"I'm very happy we're moving the company here and I'm excited to be part of the Minnesota ecosystem," she said. "I've been connected to so many people in such a short period of time. It's wonderful to feel welcomed and get a lot of attention. I feel we're in the right place for what we're doing."
