NATIVE's New Nutraceutical Division
As we celebrate NATIVE EXTRACTS' 5th anniversary since the management restructuring in 2016, Owner and Innovator, Lisa Carroll reflects on the significant advances our new leadership team has created. NATIVE EXTRACTS continues to evolve the botanical extract and move into new industry sectors to create new benchmarks in natural ingredients and improved inclusion of growers. The exponential growth of the business, and improvement of our technical expertise and quality systems, research and discovery has resulted in partnerships, collaborations, and additions to our team with numerous industry experts.
LIQUID ESSENXCES - THE LEADING EDGE
Continuing to push new boundaries, we now find ourselves at the forefront of the extracts industry for ingestible applications. We’ve grown beyond plant profiling, designing our own technology, developing unique protocols and methodologies, and have an incredible experienced technical team. Also, we have a growing network of industry experts, and have research collaborations with multiple Australian Universities. Expanding on what we have achieved to date, following on our advances in water-soluble Cellular Extract Profiles, NATIVE EXTRACTS has spent over 5 years developing knowledge and protocols for our new range of nutrient-dense Native EssenXces for nutraceutical and wellbeing innovations.
NEW NUTRACEUTICAL DIVISION - DR STEPHENS AT THE HELM!
Our research and discoveries have our business expanding its offering with access to new markets and commercial engagements, and we’re attracting Expressions Of Interest from high-ranking research institutions, as well as highly qualified and accomplished scientists to join our team. We’re so happy to welcome Dr Evan Stephens (B.Biotech, B.Sc(Hons), PhD) to our team as NATIVE EXTRACTS' Senior Biotechnology and Nutrition Specialist, who is spearheading the research in our new nutraceutical division.
With over 20 publications and almost 4,000 citations of his scientific work to date, 3 fellowships and 7 awards, Dr Stephens is now working with us on several exciting new projects in the cosmeceutical and nutraceutical sectors. He is developing commercialisation projects and is already working on a new scientific paper due for publication this year. His 25 years experience in nutrition studies and 15 years experience in biotechnology complement our team’s extensive qualifications. He will be mentoring our technical team and working in collaboration with our Lead Biochemist, Alice Mann. This strengthens the calibre and depth of our scientific expertise and the brains trust of our staff!
NATIVE’s Director, Lisa Carroll, shares her excitement for the speed and significance of this new space,
“Our growth and trajectory for our Native EssenXce range is on fast forward - backed by the perfect qualified team (the NE dream team!) who have already led us to working on a number of high level nutraceutical projects! From a plant species commercialisation perspective to improved health-span targets, the team is buzzing with what they have in store!”
In addition to his qualifications, Dr Stephens shares our enthusiasm for advancing science and natural solutions saying,
“I am excited to join the team at Native Extracts as I consider them thought leaders in the industry, with a deep awareness of the importance of specific nutrients from plants for health and wellbeing. The scientifically recognised potential of phytonutrients for health promotion has developed strongly over the past three decades and will continue to increase in significance.”
NATURAL PHYTONUTRIENT RESEARCH EXPERIENCING EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
Dr. Stephens further backs why this space is more important than ever before, “In the 1990’s when I started studying nutrition science, I had some concerns that phytonutrients were not receiving adequate scientific attention as were other, more profitable sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry. Looking back though, my concerns were unwarranted – there has been an explosion of research and this is growing exponentially."
According to Dr. Stephens, there are now in many cases tens of thousands of studies on individual phytonutrients, and this is growing year on year (demonstrated by the chart below, publicly available data from the Web of Science). We can’t give away all the nutrients that we are following the development of, but some of the most studied include phytonutrients like β-carotene, anthocyanins and curcuminoids.
Dr. Stephens continues, “Our understanding of phytonutrients has evolved over time too: In the 80’s and 90’s, the mainstream school of thought was that phytonutrients acted just as antioxidants, which is partially correct. Many compounds do indeed act in plants as antioxidants, but what we now know is that specific phytonutrients can have more important interactions within our human biology and biochemistry, such as anti-inflammatory activity.”
Stay tuned to learn more as we delve into the research with Dr. Stephens and reveal these discoveries through the lens of our innovative ingestible ingredients.
Email enquiries@nativeextracts.com to discover the advances in our Nutraceutical Space with our new range of nutrient-dense breakthrough Native EssenXces!