NASA Sets Standard for Nutritional Health Products

Subheadline

Early NASA partnership becomes foundation of reborn dietary health company

Among the most enduring medical mysteries of space travel are the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the eye. Some astronauts experience changes in vision and eye anatomy that quickly resolve after their return to Earth, while others develop issues that persist long after spaceflight. Some see little change at all. Despite a number of NASA studies, the precise cause of so-called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome remains unknown.

The rest of us now stand to benefit, however, from the mysterious and varied nature of astronauts’ eye afflictions, because it’s resulted in a dietary supplement that addresses just about every possible source of eye problems. The OS2 Ocular Support Solution is one of the products Nugevity co-developed with NASA and has released since the company restructured and rebranded from its earlier incarnation as AmeriSciences (Spinoff 2012). Others include sports nutrition products based on work the Houston-based company did to support astronaut training and a bone-health supplement stemming from efforts to counteract the atrophy caused by long-term weightlessness.

OS2 is now Nugevity’s most popular product within the United States, while its biggest seller internationally is still the AS 10 Life multivitamin and antiaging supplement released in 2011, one of AmeriSciences’ first products developed with NASA. Nugevity now markets about a dozen dietary supplements, all of which have benefited to some degree from work with the space agency.

Answering NASA’s Call

AmeriSciences LP was only a few years old when NASA reached out in 2004, proposing a partnership to develop countermeasures to the health hazards of long-term space travel. These include not only eye and vision troubles but also bone and muscle atrophy, immune dysfunction, and issues related to oxidative stress caused by radiation from the Sun and from the galaxy outside our solar system.

Under a Space Act Agreement, the company collected input from various departments at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which handles human spaceflight research for the agency. “Every time we talked to a different office, they added different requirements or changed the requirements the prior people had set, so it was definitely a lengthy and very thorough journey,” said Carlos Montesinos, who was chief scientist at AmeriSciences and is now managing director and chief scientist at Nugevity.

One of the most productive relationships, he said, was a collaboration with the center’s chief pharmacologist, who was “very skeptical at first, to put it mildly,” of any dietary supplement company. Her long list of requirements raised the company’s quality control standards for product safety, consistency, and performance to at least those of a pharmaceutical company. These became what Nugevity now calls its Pharma-IQ standards, which Montesinos said exceed pharmaceutical best manufacturing practices.

Another important result of working with Johnson’s pharmacologist is what the company now calls its BioRelease technology, he said. Pharmaceuticals are required to dissolve in the body such that at least 75% of their active ingredients are available for uptake within an hour. No such requirement exists for dietary supplements, but, to satisfy the pharmacologist, Nugevity managed to achieve a dissolution rate of 95% in the first hour, ensuring that the products are effective.

Ingredients included a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, but a major focus was antioxidants to combat the oxidative stress triggered by space radiation. Oxidative stress, which increases with age, is also the major cause of the symptoms of aging, as it damages cells and their organelles and DNA, resulting in increased risk of age-related illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. Relieving oxidative stress, therefore, is of interest to the general population, regardless of radiation exposure.

After the company came up with formulations that met the needs raised by various NASA teams and the standards set by the pharmacologist, it manufactured pilot products and then worked with NASA flight surgeons to try them out on mice. “We ran a few experiments at the University of Pittsburgh, where we would collaborate on developing the method,” Montesinos said. “We were coinvestigators in the drafting of the experiment, and we would work together to publish the results.”

AmeriSciences ultimately commercialized several products stemming from its partnership with NASA, including targeted multivitamins, antioxidants, and omega-3 fatty acid supplements.

Pill-Based Space Tech

Not long after, however, the company ran into financial difficulties and went out of business. Montesinos credits the collaboration with NASA for the interest he subsequently received from investors, who helped him revive the company as Premium Vitamins and Supplements LLC, doing business as Nugevity. In a dietary supplement industry that “leaves a lot to be desired in terms of credibility, in terms of quality control, and in terms of regulatory oversight,” he said, the space agency’s input and approval inspired confidence from both consumers and investors.

Upon its revival, Nugevity incorporated the Pharma IQ standards and BioRelease technology it had developed with NASA into all of its products, including several that were otherwise developed independently of the space agency. The company continued producing supplements born from AmeriSciences’ work with NASA and added a few more that stemmed from that partnership. These include the OS2 supplement for eye health, a few sports nutrition products stemming from work to help astronauts cope with the stresses of training, and a supplement called Osteo BHR, which incorporates a slew of ingredients aimed at increasing bone mineral density, as well as cardiovascular health.

Among the users of the sports nutrition products are the U.S. Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball team. Montesinos said the multivitamins remain popular. Meanwhile, the newer eye-health product has caught on due to the unusual range of ailments it works against, he said, noting that it includes ingredients for avoiding age-related macular degeneration, as well as other countermeasures stemming from the company’s work with NASA. These help alleviate radiation-induced changes that can lead to cataracts, glaucoma, poor night vision, and reduced tear function. “It’s a much more comprehensive product than what’s currently in the marketplace from traditional sources,” Montesinos said. “So I think that’s probably the best illustration of how the consumer benefits from the work we’ve done with NASA.”

Reaching New Markets, Reviving Old Partnership

In the years before the pandemic, much of Nugevity’s growth was in Asia, where the company picked up distributors in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Montesinos said this growth was interrupted by COVID-19 but has since picked back up, with new distribution partners emerging in Malaysia and Indonesia.

And he’s once again working with NASA. Nugevity, Johnson, and the Navy are now searching for any molecules in the body that are affected by radiation injury or oxidative stress during long-term spaceflight, known as biomarkers. “The work we did during the Space Act Agreement days was a lot more ‘macro’ in nature,” Montesinos said. “Now we’re digging deeper into the science, looking at molecular biomarkers and how cells control gene activity, which can then steer the development of nutritional interventions tailored to each individual need.”

It’s a continuation of the partnership that he said has been foundational to the business’s resurrection, its brand, and its products. “It was that project of working with the agency when I was chief scientist at AmeriSciences that helped me develop a passion for this work,” Montesinos said. “It has benefited us greatly, and I think that ultimately has benefited the consumer — or if we want to be romantic about it, humanity — because of the standards that we and NASA codeveloped.”