Radicle Science debuts service to close proof gap for nutraceuticals

Some dietary supplements lack clinical proof of their effectiveness—a proof gap that leads to a big opportunity loss for the industry and consumers. But one AI-driven healthtech B-corp, is hoping to change that.

Radicle Science recently launched its Radicle Proof Engine, a proof-as-a-service solution which enables non-pharmaceutical health and wellness products to clinically prove their effects beyond placebo.

“The proof gap we've identified is the fact that in the natural products and dietary supplement industry, very few products specifically have clinical trial data on that specific product. And one of the main reasons for this proof gap is that clinical trials are just simply too expensive and too slow. They serve patented pharmaceuticals that have the right business model to afford that but for natural products and dietary supplements, you can't patent them. They can't justify these tremendous costs and delays leading to what we find which is the proof gap,” explained Jeff Chen, MD, Radicle Science CEO and Co-Founder. 

As Pelin Thorogood, Radicle’s Co-Founder and Executive Chair explained, the Radicle Proof Engine allows non-pharmaceuticals to generate clinical evidence across diverse conditions and populations at unprecedented affordability, speed and scale, to help close the proof gap between non-prescription wellness products and pharmaceutical drugs. 

“We've created this proof-as-service category, specifically to serve the nutraceutical market since they truly do not have access to clinical trials,” Thorogood said. “We're doing that by creating automation, standardization and leaning into a lot of technology to really turn this into a product as a service instead of having these bespoke trials that produce data over a long period of time and very expensively. So we’ve really simplified the model and created history's first easy path to prove their true effectiveness by creating this proof-as-a-service.”

After launching last year, the company conducted many trials on a variety of natural ingredients, studying 20,000 Americans across numerous health conditions. Radicle said the results have given its clients everything from tens of millions of dollars of increased company valuation to triple digit increases in sales to winning over celebrity ambassadors who just needed to see proof before signing on.

Several brands have partnered with Radicle, including Gaia Herbs, to study the effectiveness of its products for stress and anxiety. Neurohacker is also partnering with Radicle Science to research efficacy for cognition.

“Radicle has manuscripts that have been accepted for publication in peer reviewed journals, which we’re really excited about, considering we only started launching studies last summer. So launched, executed, completed, analyzed, manuscript created, submitted and approved for publication and so it'll be available very shortly. And so it's a pretty impressive turnaround time line and our company only got started last year,” said Dr. Chen.