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

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."