Interview with Lisa Bilotti, associate and expert in the protection of intellectual property at NaturextraLab

Interview with Lisa Bilotti, associate and expert in the protection of intellectual property at NaturextraLab, an innovative startup that studies plant resources through phytochemistry and IT.

NaturextraLab’s goal is patenting the most effective formulas on the market for the pharmaceutical, food, nutraceutical, cosmetic and veterinary sector. Furthermore, any piece of useful information about medicinal herbs is collected in a database. 

Patents

NaturextraLab’s patents meet the demand of innovation of those nutraceutical companies that need to develop new formulas, or that are interested in benefiting from the startup’s know-how. The supplements developed from these formulas contain a mixture of plant extracts from Calabria Region.

Laboratory

NaturextraLab conducts chemical-biological research independently or for the sake of third parties. Marketing companies – especially the food-related kind – that need to specify the product’s nutritional value and quality benefit the most from the startup’s research. 

The equipment used for NaturextraLab’s chemical analysis is the following:

• Extractors: macerators, percolators, infusers, decoction devices, vapour stream, Soxhlet apparatuses, shipping
• High vacuum rotary evaporator
• Fume hood
• Chromatographic equipment: HPLC, chromatography columns, TLC, GC, GC/MS, HPTLC, spectrophotometer

As for biological tests:

• Laminar flow hood, microplate reader, spectrofluorimeter, cell incubator, refrigerating room (-80 °C), spray dryer

NaturextraLab has a research agreement with the University of Calabria’s Department of Pharmacy and Health and Nutrition Science.

Platform

NaturextraLab’s web platform provides users with free or guided research via interactive tips related to medicinal herbs, delivering information on their specific properties, location, active substances, benefits, and processing modalities.

Hello Lisa, nice to meet you, and thank you for your time. How and when did your journey begin?

My pleasure, and thank you for this opportunity. NaturextraLab was set up in 2019, but our adventure started much earlier. At first, we tried to understand how the increasingly important nutraceutical market worked, and our research showed that only few companies that produce supplements have an R&D laboratory. So, we s decided to offer those companies our help, and from there our idea saw an organic growth: today our goal is to provide the public with innovative and healthy solutions, and we also want to promote a more sustainable supply chain for the sake of our land and circular economy.

How long did it take for your project to take off?

Once we understood the market demand and clarified our intentions, we started working on: research and development for patenting, setting up a laboratory for chemical-biological research and the development of our web platform. In two two years of activity we got our laboratory aiming to conduct research on our own or on behalf of third parties , able to provide companies with our advanced technical and scientific support (in vitro, in vivo studies and clinical trials). We’re also in the process of laboratory accreditation with respect to the UNI CEI EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard. Using our own resources and those obtained from the University of Calabria, we filed two national patents. The first patent has been requested in Europe as well, and it obtained the research report and patentability opinion form the EPO: since the outcome is favourable, the patent will be soon released all over Europe. As for our platform, we’re at the stage of finalizing the prototype.

How do you create a patent? And what about the plants you use?

Regarding patents, we use a co-creation approach: we listen to the nutraceutical companies’ needs, which intend to purchase new patented formulas for their business lines. The plant choice is based on that same principle: our scientific department selects and conducts research on the most well-known plants, then the harvesting, extraction and testing phase begins, but always with our clients’ wishes in mind. Our first two patents were meant to combat the insurgence of pancreatic lipase and obesity, and also to control cholesterol levels, but we don’t have an area of prevailing interest: our research is demand driven. In fact, apart from the nutraceutical sector, we’d like to extend our activity to the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and veterinary sector as well.

When and why did you start a scientific collaboration with the University of Calabria’s Department of Pharmacy and Health and Nutrition Science?

We are strictly linked to the academic world since our scientific director is Giancarlo Statti, full professor of Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Calabria. On 30th October 2020 our scientific collaboration agreement with the University of Calabria was signed. Our goal is to ensure an exchange of experience in the nutraceutical/food/pharmaceutical sector that can be mutually beneficial.

How does your platform for researching medicinal herbs work?

Our platform supports universities, companies, laboratories and production workshops in the census of areas, plants anduses. For the first time, information about each plant’s specific properties, location, active substances, benefits and processing methods is all gathered in a single database, which can be easily interrogated by the users.Users are able to make free or guided research, the latest thanks to interactive tips, and there’s the possibility of intersecting different info. All information is validated by scientific publishings, which can be reached via link by the user. The platformwill include information on supplements and patents of extract mixtures, NaturextraLab’s patents in the lead. 36.000 supplements, 2.400 plant-drug-method solvent-extraction combinations and 2.500 beneficial effects are registered in the database. We also look forward to reach other medicinal plant-related environments: the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, food and veterinary sectors.

What has the market’s response been so far? 

We started promoting our startup by reaching out to national and international food supplement companies, local agri-food companies, producer and interbranch organisations, science and technology parks, research institutions, Italian and foreign chambers of commerce, embassies and ICE. The response has been positive so far: there’s an ever-growing interest towards us, and that makes us very proud.

How did you launch your project?

We entrusted the expertise and experience of our marketing consultant, Doctor Vincenzo Gallo, and of one of the associates, Francesco Martirano. Apart from connections to companies, chambers of commerce and embassies, we’re also trying to become known to the public through specialist magazine articles.

Local medicinal plants are at NaturextraLab’s core: why are they that important to rediscover?

Mediterranean flora – especially that from Calabria – has important beneficial properties, well-documented by scientific literature. The most prominent are the antioxidant, tonic, stomatic, diuretic properties and also those that help with digestive system spasms. This flora is truly a rich  resource for our health. Many of these plants grow in Calabria spontaneously, which allows us to harvest them at a low cost.

Credits: 

https://www.naturextralab.it/