Thorne Research And HerbalScience Group Announce Discovery And Development Deal For Line Of Natural Health Products

SANDPOINT, Idaho, Feb. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Thorne Research, Inc., a leader in developing and manufacturing pure, high-quality nutritional supplements and personal care products marketed through medical professionals, today announced that the company has entered an exclusive research, licensing, and distribution joint venture with HerbalScience Group (HSG) of Naples, Florida. 

The new joint venture will discover and develop products from the extensive HSG natural chemistry libraries, using the company's proprietary formulation and manufacturing technology to create consistent, reproducible extracts.  Products will be marketed and distributed through Thorne's established global marketing network for high-quality nutritional supplements, and other healthcare and personal care products.

"This strategic joint venture will allow Thorne to accelerate our goal of becoming the leading global lifestyle medicine company, by combining the professional portfolio and commercialization capabilities of Thorne Research with the extensive HerbalScience library of market-ready ingredients that target major clinical endpoints," said Paul Jacobson, CEO of Thorne Research. "The collaboration will build on the current Thorne brand to become one of the most respected and valued companies in the lifestyle medicine industry, while advancing Thorne's goal of providing complete transparency on safety and efficacy issues relevant to the natural health products industry."

Through this strategic development deal, Thorne will be able to access HSG's market-ready pipeline of over 1,000 extracts for use in the manufacture and commercialization of supplements, functional foods, beverages, medical foods, and other products. The HSG disruptive technology platform is able to tightly control for multiple active compounds in every extract, provide assay-based confirmation of biological activity during product manufacture, define human pharmacokinetics on all extracts, and facilitate the most sophisticated safety tracking program in the industry.  HSG's manufacturing technology has been designed to conform to the rigorous chemical manufacturing controls (CMC) of botanical drug specifications instituted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is FDA 21CFR211 compliant.

This technology is used in connection with an advanced quality control contaminant screening program that will routinely test for almost 1500 compounds, representing the most rigorous quality control program in the natural product industry.  In addition, the HSG platform is focused on manufacturing ingredients that meet established Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) standards. 

The joint venture will also target development of a pipeline of medical foods designed to support a range of established health and patient nutrition needs. HSG's robust medical food pipeline, coupled with Thorne's extensive experience in development and launch of new tools to support dietary management associated with a range of chronic conditions, positions the joint venture to become a leader in specialized nutritional products to address a wide range of health needs. 

"HerbalScience has over 12 years of experience in the discovery, development and manufacture of safe and biologically effective health products derived from natural sources," said Robert Gow, Executive Chairman of HSG. "Our proprietary technology has enabled us to identify and maximize bioactives from multiple source materials to produce reliable and effective natural based health products with confirmed biological activity. As a leader in producing and marketing lifestyle solutions to physicians, Thorne is the ideal partner we need to grow our business. This joint venture is positioned to facilitate the fast rollout of lifestyle-improving nutritional and personal care products to the rapidly growing medical and consumer markets."

About Thorne Research, Inc.
Since 1984, Thorne Research has set the standard for exceptional quality manufacturing and formulation of premium hypoallergenic dietary supplements available through licensed health-care practitioners. With more than 400 products, Thorne Research is recognized by health-care practitioners as a leader in providing dietary supplements of the highest quality and purity. Through recent acquisitions and joint ventures, Thorne Research now also offers product lines that address the nutritional issues and requirements of those with cancer, cognitive and brain health, and cardiovascular health, in addition to a product line for high performance athletes, a comprehensive product line of organic, non-GMO skin-care products, and related supportive practice management programs. With locations in Sandpoint, ID and Greenwich, CT, Thorne Research operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and employs more than 250 people. Further information on Thorne Research is available at www.Thorne.com.

About HerbalScience Group
HerbalScience Group (HSG) is a research and development company that has over the last 12 years made significant scientific breakthroughs in the creation and production of science based botanical natural health products. HSG has created an industry leading proprietary technology platform which produces innovative and scientifically validated natural health products. The technology platform utilizes proprietary HSG developed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) botanical based libraries; a screening library of over 850 thousand natural chemistries which reduces new natural health product development time by 30+% and an industry leading 97 thousand+ natural chemistry library which was developed by conducting human pharmacokinetics on HSG produced GRAS botanical extracts for specific health endpoints. This library is used to assist in the new natural health product development process and adds substantial value in the selection of new dietary ingredients. HSG has also developed the industry's leading fully developed GRAS botanical based functional ingredient library which contains over one thousand whole botanical ingredients with proprietary extraction conditions developed for batch to batch production biological consistency for each. HSG has also discovered the biological mode of action of each the library's botanical ingredients.

SOURCE Thorne Research, Inc.