Looking at Sabinsa Corporation today, seeing it as one of the natural products industry’s more prominent suppliers of both standardized herbal extracts and nutritional fine chemicals, recognizing that it has facilities in both New Jersey and Utah (as well as an exclusive working arrangement with a large, modern manufacturing operation in India), knowing that its principal policy makers and product development people combine decades of Western scientific training and experience with centuries of background in Eastern and alternative medical traditions, it is sometimes easy to forget that this rapidly growing, financially sound business entity started out just 10 years ago...and that its founder, Muhammed Majeed, Ph.D., was thwarted in his first effort to get the company off the ground.

Majeed’s original intent was to create a pharmaceutical company, not one devoted to natural remedies. Born in Trivandrum, a city in southern India with a population of more than a half-million, he had come to the U.S. in 1974 after earning an undergraduate degree in pharmacy from Kerala University. He was 23 years old and had the grand sum of $8 in his pocket when he arrived, that being the maximum amount that emigres were allowed to remove from India at the time.

A willing worker, Majeed landed a maintenance job with a relatively small Chicago, IL-based pharmaceutical manufacturer, switched over to the production side and quickly worked his way up so that he was in charge of manufacturing operations in the short span of three years. Then, in 1977, he moved to the East Coast to go to work in Pfizer’s R&D department and to continue his education.

Majeed lived and worked in New Jersey and commuted more than 80 miles in each direction so that he could attend Long Island University’s Arnold and Marie Schwartz School of Pharmacy. He earned his master’s degree in industrial pharmacy in 1980.

The following year, Majeed took a job as senior research pharmacist and manager of special projects for Carter-Wallace, located in Cranbury. By 1984, he had been promoted to a post where he headed up all product development. He was, in fact, the only person in the history of the company to serve in that position without having yet earned a Ph.D.

It took Majeed until 1986 to fill in this last gap in his education, and by that time he was no longer working for Carter-Wallace. In 1985, he had accepted a job with Lakewood, NJ-based Paco Pharmaceuticals. At this company, he says, the focus was on the formulation of sterile products.

With this background, it isn’t surprising that Majeed targeted the pharmaceutical industry when, in 1988, he resigned from Paco and struck out on his own, using Sabinsa, his wife’s name, as the appellation for the new company.

Nevertheless, "best laid plans" in business, as in other aspects of life, sometimes have a way of falling through. In this instance, a balky Food and Drug Administration (FDA) significantly slowed the introduction of Majeed’s first intended product—a medicine that would help people withdraw from addictive narcotics.

When it got to the point where he needed a product in the marketplace just to generate some revenue for his fledgling company, Majeed developed a vitamin product—slow-release niacin granules—that was intended to maintain levels throughout the day and reduce flushing.

Even for this product he had a medical benefit in mind—cholesterol control. But he also knew that he couldn’t compete on a dollar-for-dollar basis with the deep pockets of the giant drug manufacturers. So he started to look at some of the plant products from his native India. The elements of the Ayurvedic tradition were almost second nature to him. As a youngster, he had been treated and seen others treated by practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine.

As Majeed explored various aspects of Ayurvedic medicine and sought to mesh them with his scientific training and his interest in cholesterol control, he found a plant that yielded a gum resin which is "the starting point" for many natural-content products that aim to maintain healthy cholesterol levels. It is from this guggul plant (Commiphora mukul) that Sabinsa ultimately launched its flagship trademarked product—Gugulipid.

Majeed, now in his mid-40s, recalls his breakthrough sale of the new ingredient—to Nature’s Herbs, a TwinLab company with headquarters in American Fork, UT. David Blechman, Twin’s founder and then chief executive officer, his son Steve, who was involved with product development, and Steve Welling, who continues as president of Nature’s Herbs, were the primary movers in accepting the new material.

Following Nature’s Herbs’ successful launch of Gugulipid, that company sought to add more products grounded in Ayurveda to its line. Sabinsa followed up with Boswellin, another trademarked product, which is derived from the "Dhup" tree (Boswellia serrata) and which is known as "the anti-inflammatory phytonutrient," and ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), which sometimes is referred to as Indian ginseng and which has been used for generations as an adaptogen or restorative.

What distinguished these early Sabinsa products from some of the other herbal products then prominent in the marketplace, says Majeed, is the fact that they were all standardized extracts, meaning that the potency of the active ingredients could be assured from one batch to the next.

Even today, Majeed continues, between 80% and 90% of Sabinsa’s herbal products are standardized extracts. "The only exception to this is when a customer tells the company it wants to fill an entire capsule with material from a given plant species and the standardized extract doesn’t have sufficient volume to make this happen. In these cases, we grind up otherwise unused parts of the plant and provide our client with fillers taken from the same sort of plant that supplied the active ingredient."

Majeed explains his desire for isolating standardized extracts as an expression of his belief in science and his training in pharmacy. "Human nature," he says, "is such that it wants to know and be able to identify the active principle that makes a product achieve certain results. If you later determine that the whole plant works better than the extract, you can always go back and reassemble it later on."

Majeed says that his years in research taught him the value of persistence. "Our company’s mission might best be described by the researcher’s credo: be committed to what you are doing."

According to Majeed, the method of research involves focus on a target, the expending of all efforts to achieve that target and the understanding that if you fail (which is inevitable at times) you will learn from that failure.

"Persistence pays off," he insists and offers the following as evidence: "We spent four years researching the safe and proper manufacturing aspects of selenium in the form of L(+) Selenomethionine. We believe this to be the most biologically available form for human nutrition. It was not until 1995 that we got our product into the marketplace. Yet today we are the largest volume [producer] of this substance in the world."

What distinguished these early Sabinsa products from some of the other herbal products then prominent in the marketplace, says Majeed, is the fact that they were all standardized extracts, meaning that the potency of the active ingredients could be assured from one batch to the next.

Even today, Majeed continues, between 80% and 90% of Sabinsa’s herbal products are standardized extracts. "The only exception to this is when a customer tells the company it wants to fill an entire capsule with material from a given plant species and the standardized extract doesn’t have sufficient volume to make this happen. In these cases, we grind up otherwise unused parts of the plant and provide our client with fillers taken from the same sort of plant that supplied the active ingredient."

Majeed explains his desire for isolating standardized extracts as an expression of his belief in science and his training in pharmacy. "Human nature," he says, "is such that it wants to know and be able to identify the active principle that makes a product achieve certain results. If you later determine that the whole plant works better than the extract, you can always go back and reassemble it later on."

Majeed says that his years in research taught him the value of persistence. "Our company’s mission might best be described by the researcher’s credo: be committed to what you are doing."

According to Majeed, the method of research involves focus on a target, the expending of all efforts to achieve that target and the understanding that if you fail (which is inevitable at times) you will learn from that failure.

"Persistence pays off," he insists and offers the following as evidence: "We spent four years researching the safe and proper manufacturing aspects of selenium in the form of L(+) Selenomethionine. We believe this to be the most biologically available form for human nutrition. It was not until 1995 that we got our product into the marketplace. Yet today we are the largest volume [producer] of this substance in the world."

At Sabinsa, as in every successful enterprise and activity—from organizing a dinner party to winning the Super Bowl—every member of the team contributes to the overall achievement. Only a lack of space, therefore, prohibits this article from turning a spotlight on each and every Sabinsa employee.

Nevertheless, there are some individuals, in addition to Muhammed Majeed, Ph.D., the founder and president whose story is told in the accompanying article, who cannot be overlooked. Some description of what they do and how they serve the company is essential to understanding how Sabinsa has reached the position it enjoys today.

• Todd Norton, senior executive vice president: When Majeed made his first major sale of an herbal product—Gugulipid—to Nature’s Herbs, the transaction and the ensuing connection between the two companies had an unexpected benefit for the ingredient supplier. At that time, there was a young purchasing agent working at the Utah-based herb company and, over time, he and Majeed came to admire and respect each other’s working practices and philosophies. In 1994, Todd Norton, now 36, joined the East Coast firm, which is headquartered in Piscataway, NJ. His initial assignment was to assist in the marketing of Citrin, the company’s well-known extract derived from garcinia cambogia. Norton is now senior executive vice president, with an office at the company’s newest facility, in Payson, UT. He has brought the company a rich background in the American herb industry, having done everything from running an encapsulating machine to serving as manager of shipping and receiving to drawing up extensive marketing and advertising plans. He was educated at Brigham Young University and holds a degree in business administration.
  
• Vladimir Badmaev, M.D., Ph.D., vice president of medical/scientific affairs: Representing the fifth generation in a line of physicians that once treated the Russian imperial family, the 47-year-old Badmaev has a fascinating family history. Trained in two traditions—Western and Tibetan (Buryat) medicine—his forebears developed a line of medications known as the Badmaev Family Formulas. Following the Russian Revolution, the family fled its homeland, moving first to Poland, then to Switzerland and, in 1981, to the United States. "I hope that we are through with our odyssey," says Badmaev, who received his initial medical training in Poland and then earned degrees at the Brooklyn, NY-based Downstate Medical Center and Kings County Medical Center. He is a specialist in clinical and anatomical pathology, and his Ph.D. is in immunopharmacology. Badmaev met Sabinsa’s Majeed briefly in 1989, but the two did not begin communicating regularly until 1993. Badmaev joined the firm in 1994, and he says today, "It would not have been possible for me to put my family’s formulas on the market as quickly as I did—early in 1996—without the support of the Sabinsa organization."
  
• Raj Bammi, Ph.D., president of research and development and quality control: The 60-year-old Bammi, who earned his doctorate in genetics at the University of California, has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 30 years. He spent the first five years of his career with the Ford Foundation and then put in a quarter of a century with CIPLA, the second largest pharmaceutical company in India. Following his 1997 retirement from that role, he joined Sabinsa and its Bangalore, India-based affiliate, SAMI Labs Ltd., where he fills the top administrator’s role. He says one of his proudest achievements was to help bring CIPLA to a level of manufacturing modernity where it was on par with the good manufacturing practices (GMPs) set forth by the U.S. FDA.
  
• Lakshmi Prakash, Ph.D., senior research scientist: Prakash began working for Sabinsa as a part-time technical writer in 1994 while she was still a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University. After earning her Ph.D. in food science in 1996, she came on board full-time and since then has done most of the company’s technical writing, including brochures, the company newsletter and contributions to books by Majeed, Badmaev and others. She also is one of the principal authors of Capsaicin: The Anti-arthritic Phytochemical.

Commitment to Quality

Meanwhile, Majeed emphasizes Sabinsa’s mission, which he describes as "a commitment to high-quality standardized extracts and equally high-quality nutritional fine chemicals." This commitment, he says, runs all the way through every operation the company undertakes—from R&D through production, distribution, technical support and marketing. And, he adds, it is evident in every product Sabinsa sells.

He notes that the company has been licensed by the state of New Jersey to distribute both drug and nutritional products. In addition, he says, Sabinsa adheres strictly to good manufacturing practices (GMPs) at all of its facilities throughout the nation and the world. These include:

• Piscataway, NJ—corporate headquarters
  
  
• Princeton, NJ—research and development and pilot manufacturing plant (under the direction of Raj Bammi, Ph.D., president of R&D and quality control and top administrator for SAMI Chemicals & Extracts)
  
  
• Payson, UT—sales and distribution for the western United States and the Pacific Rim countries (under the direction of Todd Norton)
  
  
• Bangalore, India—corporate offices, R&D, quality control, warehousing and pilot manufacturing for SAMI Chemicals & Extracts, the Sabinsa affiliate that is dedicated to manufacturing products solely for the U.S.-based company
  
  
• Shimoga, India—SAMI production facility for standardized herbal extracts
  
  
• Kunigal, India—SAMI production facility for nutritional fine chemicals.

What Sabinsa Offers

While the six materials described above are among those most in demand currently, Sabinsa also has dozens of others, ranging in nature from adaptogens like ashwagandha (sometimes called the Indian ginseng), to cold remedies like zinc monomethionine, to weight management products like Citrin, which is taken from the rind of the fruit of Garcinia cambogia and then standardized at a minimum of 50% (-) -hydroxycitric acid.

All of these products are well-established and currently represent revenue-producing lines for Sabinsa. In addition, as might be expected, the company has numerous materials that are in various stages of development.These include standardized herbs from countries other than India, such as kava, saw palmetto, pygeum, yohimbe, etc.; delivery systems, such as slow-release formulations and soft extracts for filling softgel capsules; and "cosmeceuticals" such as tetrahydrocurcumin, a topical skin care antioxidant. In addition, the company is looking at combination herbs with an eye to developing a database that will cover information about compatibilty, efficacy and toxicity.

Most of these are not yet fully formed as Sabinsa products, but they are areas to watch for the future. Meanwhile, there also are other products that are further along in the pipeline. For example, one of the newest trademarked products on Sabinsa’s shelves is Fenufiberstm, an herbal material derived from fenugreek seeds. According to Lakshmi Prakash, Ph.D., senior research scientist with Sabinsa, fenugreek is an herb that has been used for several hundred years as a cooking ingredient in both the Far East and Europe. Prakash says that it adds both spicy flavor and bulk (because of its high fiber content) to the recipes in which it is used.

"We make two products from fenugreek—" says Prakash, "Fenufibers, which possess blood sugar-lowering properties, and Fenusterolstm, which contains furostanol saponins that can help support anabolic muscle growth and therefore be useful in sports nutrition."

Noting that Fenufibers had been available for less than six months at the time this interview was conducted, Prakash said it had been an instant hit with Sabinsa’s customers—the manufacturers who use it in branded products. Unlike many of Sabinsa’s materials that wind up in dietary supplements offered as tablets or capsules, Fenufibers is being sold more as a food ingredient—for use in products such as soup mixes, vegetable juice mixes and cookie mixes.

Says Prakash: "The key is they are useful to any company that is interested in getting into a food product that has true functional, nutritional value. This may help to open a new pathway to the market for Sabinsa."

In explanation of how fenugreek can impact diabetes, Prakash offers the following, taken from a relatively new Sabinsa booklet entitled, Diabetes: Its Etiology and Control with Ayurvedic Herbs:

"A high-fiber diet is associated with the improved ability to handle blood sugar. In the presence of a high-fiber diet, the cells are more sensitive to insulin and an increase in the number of insulin receptor sites occurs or, alternatively, there is a stimulation of the cells’ ability to burn glucose. Certain dietary fibers reduce the rate of food passage through the intestine and glucose absorption into the bloodstream, thereby helping to control the increase in postprandial blood sugar levels. High-fiber diets are associated with less glycosuria, lower-fasting blood sugar levels and lower insulin requirements. Water-retaining fibers, especially the mucilaginous compounds, such as the gel fiber present in fenugreek seeds, reduce the rate of glucose absorption and may also delay gastric emptying, thereby preventing the rise in blood sugar levels following a meal."

The Sabinsa literature cites studies to show that fenugreek fibers have both a hypoglycemic and a hypolipidemic effect. The former can be seen in their capacity to delay carbohydrate absorption, thus reducing insulin requirements. In addition, it has been speculated, fenugreek fibers may help improve peripheral insulin sensitivity.

As for the hypocholesterolemic effect of fenugreek fiber, the Sabinsa booklet has this to say: "It has been shown that the gel fraction of fenugreek fiber contains galactomannans which increase the viscosity of the digesta, thereby reducing serum cholesterol levels. This is achieved through the inhibition of cholesterol absorption in the small intestine and also the inhibition of bile acid reabsorption in the terminal ileum."

The Sabinsa booklet also highlights other herbs that appear to be of value to diabetic individuals, including standardized extracts of Gymnema sylvestre and Momordica charantia.

In the growing fields. In the greenhouses. In the laboratories. Possibly in the library. At any given time, both in the United States and in India, these are the places where it should be possible to find one or more employees of Piscataway, NJ-based Sabinsa Corporation or its manufacturing affiliate, SAMI Chemicals & Extracts, Ltd., of Bangalore, India.

As Muhammed Majeed, Ph.D., founder and president, likes to remind listeners, "At Sabinsa, quality is not something we test for at the end of the process, but something we build into the product from the start."

Noting that about 85% of the products that the company sells in the U.S. are products that actually were introduced by Sabinsa, Majeed says, "In some instances, we control quality by providing seed material developed by SAMI in company greenhouses. We actually bring the seeds to the farmers who are under contract to us for various botanicals, such as coleus, chili (cayenne) and turmeric."

Sabinsa also sends procurement teams into the growing fields where they can check on plant health and activity prior to harvest. "They do spot-tests and approve the yield even before the material is bundled," Majeed explains.

The next step following harvest, says Sabinsa’s founder, is delivery to one of the company-controlled processing facilities where components are sampled and tested before being placed into production.

Majeed emphasizes that periodic testing continues throughout the production effort. This is all part of process control.

"Our objective at all times is to build quality into the product, and this is not always easy to do." Majeed expounds: "Individual plant organisms, even of the same species, have different strengths and different levels of activity. The time of year a plant is harvested, the weather, the maturity of the plant—all these have an effect on what a specific leaf or root or flower will give you in terms of efficacy."

Majeed continues: "The true complexity of natural products can be seen when you source the same material from different regions of a large country like India. That makes you a believer in the great power of Mother Nature."

In attempting to harness this power of Nature in the service of human health, Sabinsa relies heavily on the contributions of science and technology. Its principal product development people all have advanced degrees: Majeed is a Ph.D. pharmacist from St. John’s University; Vladimir Badmaev, vice president of medical/scientific affairs, is a medical doctor with a Ph.D. in immunopharmacology from Bialystok Medical School; Raj Bammi, president of R&D and quality control, has a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California-Davis and more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry; and numerous other employees have extensive and specialized training.

"Although some of our products are built on the tradition of Ayurveda, they are not traditional Ayurvedic products," says Majeed. "Rather, they are new, laboratory-developed, scientifically researched and usually standardized products."

The key is standardization of active principles, according to Badmaev. "This is what is bringing new respect and acceptance for Ayurveda today," he says.

A big part of his job, Bammi relates, is to ensure that Sabinsa products are consistent. This can only be achieved, he says, if procedures are documented and reproducible. Quality control testing is essential, and it must utilize sophisticated, sensitive, up-to-date techniques and equipment.

According to Bammi, who maintains offices in both Bangalore, India and Princeton, NJ, "Those of us who grew up in the Ayurvedic tradition and then acquired scientific training found that the old remedies really are effective, but they are not always equally effective because of a lack of standardization." He suggests that by marrying the two—the ancient lore with the objective science—perhaps a new kind of medicine might be created—a system that could be called "allo-vedic" medicine.

This push toward the new is something that many in the industry have come to expect from Sabinsa. As Majeed says, "There is a general appreciation of our R&D capability. What is sometimes less well recognized is our dedication to education, marketing and sales—all of which are necessary to sustain the R&D approach."

In the area of education, for example, Todd Norton, the company’s executive vice president, points with pride to the firm’s "Sabinsa on Wheels" program. Designed as a series of portable seminars, these attracted large and distinguished audiences representing a broad segment of industry disciplines. The original series, launched in 1995, traveled to more than 15 cities, including Salt Lake City, UT, Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY, to name a few.

Currently, the program is in its second phase. Norton explains that the initial effort was aimed at informing a wide swath of industry opinion-makers of the scientific capabilities of Sabinsa. In the second stage, now under way, he says, "individual manufacturers of branded supplements are asking us to come in and make in-house presentations for their laboratory, production and marketing people. We’ve been doing these all over, and not just in the U.S., but in Japan, Korea, Italy, Denmark and the U.K., as well."

As Norton sees it, the Sabinsa product line and approach to the marketplace are "uniquely successful wherever they are taken—provided there is a basis of product understanding." Nevertheless, he says, at no time do any of the seminars stray into what might be considered a commercial zone: their sole purpose is "to inform anyone who cares to know about the uses and benefits of the specific ingredients being covered."

Norton points out that this information also is readily available on the Sabinsa Web site—www.sabinsa.com—and, he adds, company personnel are accustomed to fielding dozens of letters and telephone calls asking a host of questions. "Some of these come from retailers and consumers," says the marketing executive, "but more commonly they are from manufacturers and R&D people. We even get some inquiries from research scientists working in university settings." In fact, adds Norton, there has been correspondence between the company and Dr. Christiaan Barnard, of heart transplant fame. Barnard currently suffers from arthritis, for which he is using Sabinsa’s Boswellin, a trademarked anti-inflammatory product derived from Boswellia serrata extract.

Beyond these educational efforts, Sabinsa also has mounted seminars for attendees at national trade shows, and its key people have contributed to numerous books on such subjects as turmeric, capsaicin, Boswellin and Citrin (a trademarked herbal, hydroxycitric acid-rich weight management product derived from Garcinia cambogia).

Muhammed Majeed, Ph.D., the founder and president of Piscataway, NJ-based Sabinsa Corporation, beams proudly when he tells you that, of the 50 leading nutritional health products during the 1990s, his firm was the originator of perhaps 75%.

That’s an impressive record of innovation for a company that was not much more than a gleam in its founder’s eye until 1988, a mere 10 years ago.

Today, with facilities on two continents, almost 450 employees working for it or its affiliate, SAMI Chemicals & Extracts, more than $20 million in sales and recognition ranging from the Inc. and Technology listings of the top 500 companies to receipt of the 1995 Presidential Award for Quality and Innovation from the president of India, Sabinsa can bask in the glory of a vibrant and dynamic first decade.

Now, what about tomorrow? Certainly, the energy and creativity that has brought Sabinsa this far will not now be put aside.

Instead, the company may be expected to press forward with additional new products and educational initiatives.

According to Raj Bammi, Ph.D., who heads up R&D and quality control and who oversees the SAMI operation, "We are almost at a point [in Western cultures] where large numbers of physicians and health professionals will prescribe with equal enthusiasm either a natural or a synthetically derived pharmaceutical—provided that scientific data are available to back up the claims."

Meanwhile, Majeed, who is himself a trained pharmacist, predicts an expanded role for pharmaceutical manufacturers in the natural products industry of the 21st century. This is not altogether a bad thing, he reasons. He believes that at first these giants will confine themselves to some of the industry’s best sellers. Later on, however, he expects them to pump research dollars into the market, which almost certainly would result not only in new products but in new applications for existing products as well.

He gives the following example of what happened with Citrin K, the patent pending water soluble version of Sabinsa’s well-known weight management product, Citrin. According to Majeed, researchers at George Washington University have discovered that Citrin K has an effect on lipid synthesis of cancer cells, which is essential for cell survival. In other words, a product initially devised to assist in weight loss may have a spillover effect into helping control the growth of cancer. While merely preliminary, this provocative finding is the kind of development that may escalate once big dollars are poured into this industry. As Majeed sees it, there are exciting times ahead, and he is determined that Sabinsa will play a significant role in them.