Healthycell recently announced that it has partnered with Panaceutics Nutrition to enable on-demand creation of personalized nutrition gel formulas at scale. These formulas will be created in response to customers' individual biomarker readings and, eventually, predictive analytics.
Douglas Giampapa, CEO, Healthycell, told NutraIngredients-USA that the company is partnering with FDA-registered, CLIA-certified 3rd-party labs to offer at-home blood collection test kits that will measure micronutrients and analyze epigenetic profiles that correlate to conditions in the body. He added that they may also use mobile phlebotomists.
“Depending on the formula, we can work with 50+ ingredients in each gel pack. This gives us a tremendous advantage over gummies, which have a low ingredient load,” noted Giampapa. “Probiotics are not included now, but may be in the future.”
Gel format
With five products currently on-market, Healthycell is focusing on innovation in nutritional gels in hopes of replacing capsules in the $58 billion US dietary supplement industry. Its ingestible gel dietary supplement products are taken straight from the gel pack, mixed into drinks, or blended into smoothies. Healthycell's new line of personalized gels allows for an outcome-based service where customers pay a monthly fee for testing and personalized gel formulations that are adapted over time to keep nutrient levels optimized.
Historically, supplement personalization has been based on qualitative data from customer surveys, genomic analysis or static biomarker analysis, which fail to capture physiological outcomes, time variability and externalities such as diet. Healthycell's new offering aims to replace the assortment of pills with a single, convenient gel pack with nutrient contents that can be varied over time to achieve and maintain an optimal outcome.
"The future of human nutrition lies at the intersection of three core pillars: superior delivery, nutritional status monitoring and personalization," said Giampapa. "First, pill-free, ultra-absorption delivery systems. Second, validation via testing of biomarkers to determine actual rather than hypothetical levels of nutritional status. Third, personalization informed by real-time health data, which enable individualized formulations that match each customer's nutritional needs. We're delighted to collaborate with Panaceutics as a critical partner enabling us to offer this solution. We're enabling a mass market capability in response to the widespread demand for individually tailored consumer products and services, which have only been available as a niche offering."
Gel technology
For their role, Panaceutics will offer robotic manufacturing technology capable of delivering customized, pill-free, all-in-one nutrition pouches to customers. A 30-day supply is built in a few minutes and delivered without refrigeration, directly to the consumer.
According to Giampapa, Panaceutics’ technology is the only known robotic on-demand system that can blend with precision liquid gel ingredients to create personalized formulas.
"We're very pleased to be working with Healthycell, the leading market player in gel-based dietary supplements, so this partnership is a natural fit,” said Adam Monroe, CEO of Panaceutics. “Our disruptive technology uses proprietary robotics, in combination with digital health platforms to rapidly manufacture personalized products at scale to serve individuals' needs and health conditions."
Clinical trials coming soon
Giampapa said an independent IRB-approved clinical trial on the gel assessing absorption vs a tablet yielded an exciting outcome and that research is pending publication in a nutrition journal.