HealthAide, Inc., a newly formed Oklahoma City drug development company, announced today that it has exclusively licensed six patents and two provisional patents from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Building on work first done at OMRF, HealthAide will explore possible therapeutic and health-related uses for the sweetener aspartame, widely known by the brand names “Nutrasweet” and “Equal.”
According to HealthAide CEO Dr. Tony E. Hugli, the company will investigate a wide variety of health and medical applications for the sweetener. “Many of the applications that we have planned are enhancements of existing brand-name products that are already generating multi-million dollar annual sales,” he said.
The company is seeking collaborative partners to help it continue sickle cell experiments initiated by clinical director Dr. Carl V. Manion. Funded by a grant from the American Heart Association, Manion has been investigating the effects of aspartame on sickle cell anemia, a painful disease that affects approximately 72,000 Americans, almost all of African descent. Eventually, the disease leads to organ failure and premature death, usually as a result of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke.
“In preliminary studies, we found that a one-time dose of an aspartame-based therapeutic may significantly reduce sickle cells from the blood for up to 24 hours,” said Manion. “We would like to move forward with human clinical studies, in hopes that this compound would prove an inexpensive and effective way of alleviating pain and helping to manage this terrible disease.”
HealthAide is also seeking partners to help it examine various other potential uses for aspartame-based compounds, including treatment for osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, inflammation and contact dermatitis (itches, rashes, bites and burns). In animals, the company plans to study whether these compounds have potential as food supplements that could boost appetites and increase bone density.
Scientific director Dr. Allen B. Edmundson believes that HealthAide has a key advantage over competitors in the drug development field. “The beauty of working with aspartame is that the Food and Drug Administration has already passed on its safety as a food supplement,” he said. “So we can minimize the extensive toxicology studies that are normally required and move directly to assessing aspartame’s effectiveness as a therapeutic agent.”
CEO Hugli expects that this edge will translate into dollars and cents on the company’s bottom line. “HealthAide will have very low overhead and operational expenses, which affords us the opportunity to become profitable sooner than is normally expected,” he said.
HealthAide’s management team consists of:
CEO: Dr. Tony E. Hugli, Scientific Director, California Toxicology Research Institute
Chief Scientific Officer: Dr. Allen B. Edmundson, X-ray crystallographer, OMRF
Clinical Director: Dr. Carl V. Manion, clinical pharmacologist, OMRF
Corporate Secretary and Director: John Adams, Oklahoma City investment banker
