Based on outcomes of three clinical studies which used computer modeling and computational chemistry, the company could show that NooGandha was an innovative composition that had cognitive enhancing benefits. Being granted the patent, which took two years to see to fruition, was as Specnova founder and CEO Sebastian Balcombe described as “a pretty big deal” because the company looked beyond traditional measures of ashwagandha’s efficacy. Often companies rely on withanolides, the primary active compounds responsible for the therapeutic properties of ashwagandha, to substantiate the ingredient’s role in reducing stress and anxiety.
“A lot of companies in our industry are just looking at the published literature that’s out there and saying XYZ percent of withanolides do this and that’s all they’re looking at,” Balcombe said. “We don’t build our ingredients based off old existing data. We go and do the discovery work. We’re pushing that envelope on all our ingredients or technologies.”
NooGandha, which Balcombe said he would like to see appear in energy drinks, is not the company’s only ingredient to receive a patent. The company has been granted three patents since 2017 and is less than six months away from receiving five to 10 more. Balcombe said he is constantly writing patents and “cranking them out.”
In this interview with NutraIngredients (NI), Balcombe describes what he says is a unique formula that has helped his company successfully write and receive patents.
NI: What is the main reason why you do not see nutraceutical companies filing for patents? Is it just that the process takes so long?
Sebastian Balcombe (SB): It is not that it takes so long but that it is really difficult. You can apply for a patent and then say patent pending, but it might have no chance of ever becoming a granted patent. It is difficult because you’re having to prove you found an unexpected result from something. So that’s what’s difficult, especially when you know an ingredient or a plant has been around for, and in ashwagandha’s case, thousands of years.
And then some patents that are granted are pretty low-level. They got granted, but they are not going to really give you much protection. There wasn’t like an amazing finding. I would say most patents in the supplement industry are super low-level patents. The best patents that I see are often patents that come from universities and someone from industry licenses that patent.
NI: For the well-established nutraceutical companies, large companies with lots of revenue, should they be issuing more and more patents? And why aren’t they?
SB: I think it depends on the ingredient company and its level of innovation to begin with because there are so many different types of ingredient companies in our industry and they are all needed. You have commodity-driven ingredient companies, and a lot of the time those are the biggest in our industry-- they just provide a generic ingredient that hits a certain specification and super low price point. There are a lot of customers and brands that play in that area and that’s what they’re going to buy.
I think it partly comes down to how people want to build their company. Like for Specnova, it is built around heavy technology, innovation, tech and patents that protect those innovations and super high-level clinical research.
NI: When low-level, non-complex patents are granted, does that make a company more susceptible to having a product or ingredient being copied?
SB: I think so. People are always trying to sidestep patents. That is why when we try to write patents, we try to be as broad as possible. Even though the innovation might be very, very specific, we put a lot of other stuff in the patent to protect ourselves more broadly. And sometimes it is best just to keep the secret in-house. The most classic example is Coca-Cola. They never shared the recipe, but they never patented it. And that was a very powerful way to protect the company’s know-how.
NI: Why did Specnova not go that route?
SB: Coca-Cola is really a flavor profile. It is not a technology around like a benefit, like an efficacy benefit, which is what we do. When it’s something where you can communicate a real benefit, like sustained attention, which is what we got from NooGandha, then getting a patent is beneficial.
NI: You have described putting together a team of experts which took you the last 15 to 20 years to accomplish. How did you achieve that, and how has that helped Specnova receive patents and commercial success?
SB: It is important to understand that sometimes there is a huge disconnect between the people that are doing that stuff in the lab and the people that are in a factory. Trying to mimic what was made in the lab can fall apart on the commercial side. I have always known this. So, I put together a team that has expertise in both worlds and this has been Specnova’s superpower.
NI: Can you describe your academic partners?
SB: Texas A&M has done a lot of work for us. In the early days we partnered with Jacksonville University. And my alma mater, the University of Florida, has done a massive amount of work for us, especially on the in vitro side of things. I am also close with local universities in Colorado, where I live, that are top material science and engineering universities. We definitely have great university partners overseas as well, especially in India.
Harvard University used to conduct some of our analytical chemistry work on some of our botanicals.
For universities, it increased their awareness because a lot of schools can be condescending toward our industry, because they have never done work in the supplement industry before. And when they do, they are like, ‘oh my, I had no idea the work could be this sophisticated, like the way you guys are extracting botanicals, like how you’re identifying compounds.’ It has opened their eyes to the point they wanted to do more work together.
