Pharmaceutical developer Boston Therapeutics in Manchester is betting its recently launched food supplement will be its sugar daddy. Boston Therapeutics contracted with Maryland-based Benchworks to roll out a major marketing campaign in the fall for SugarDown, a chewable, complex carbohydrate-based dietary supplement that claims to moderate blood glucose after meals. It essentially prevents the body from absorbing sugar, says David Platt, president and co-founder of publicly-traded Boston Therapeutics. SugarDown has been submitted to the FDA for functional and structural claims.
Boston Therapeutics decided to release SugarDown in September as a food supplement with no medical claims. Boston Therapeutics, which contracts with P.J. Noyes Company Inc. in Lancaster to manufacture the supplements, is marketing SugarDown through a website, social media and targeting doctors, nurses and dieticians. Next year, it expects to get the product on the shelves of retailers and pharmacies.
The five-year-old company is developing a product pipeline focused on therapeutic molecules that address diabetes and inflammatory diseases, including BTI-320, designed to reduce post-meal glucose elevation, and IPOXYN, an injectable anti-necrosis drug designed initially to treat lower limb ischemia (lack of blood supply to an area due to blocked blood vessels) associated with diabetes.
Platt, a chemical engineer and organic chemist, has led two other publicly traded companies before founding Boston Therapeutics in 2009 in the ABI Hub (now Alpha Loft) incubator. The eight-person company, which started with a 600-square-foot space and seven employees, now occupies 5,000 square feet above Elm Street. SugarDown is imperative to the company’s future, which reported raising $5.6 million as of Dec. 31, 2013, but running $7.3 million in the red with $3.4 million cash on hand. “I’ve never raised money from venture capital,” Platt says. “I raise money from Wall Street.”
For more information, visit bostonti.com.
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