Act Naturally

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Some of John Baker’s most interesting work happens on the side of the road.

That’s because he feels the promise of tomorrow’s next big health product won’t be found in the lab, but in Canada’s farms, back woods and grassy knolls.

Baker is general manager of Bioniche Botanicals — a division of Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. (Belleville, ON) that focuses on developing natural health products that address issues such as arthritis, skin conditions, the immune system, and heart and cardiovascular diseases.

Working with, and seeking out plants in close geographical proximity is part and parcel of a major theme at Bioniche — bioprospecting.
“It doesn’t happen in a laboratory for me,” Baker says. “For me, bioprospecting is doing field work — walking along fence rows and identifying plants that have potential, then bringing them back and doing the chemistry.”

Bioprospecting — seeking out new chemical entities in living things for medical, pharmaceutical or industrial use — is something that Baker believes is an important element to Bioniche Botanicals’ business strategy, and means seeking out diversity in ways other than genetic modification.
Though some major pharmaceutical companies have been known to dig through exotic locals such as the Amazon rainforest for prospective drug candidates, Baker says Bioniche’s focus on local flora is unique.
“You don’t hear much of it going on in North America or Canada,” he says. “And I think there’s still great opportunities here for that.”
And, of course, there are practical advantages to staying close to home.
“You can have an impact on the community in which you live, because you can source that product from the agricultural sector or from different communities,” Baker explains.

One example of how taking this local focus has proved beneficial for Bioniche is evening primrose, an anti-inflammatory agent that is a native plant to most of northeastern U.S. and Canada.
An omega-6 fatty acid, evening primrose oil has been used to treat pain and tenderness associated with premenstrual syndrome, itching and dryness associated with skin conditions such as eczema, and pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis.
The company has an evening primrose oil product currently on the market as part of its Omega-Fend™ line.

Branching Out
Though evening primrose, along with several other fatty acids, represent a major product area for Bioniche, the company also has several candidates in the pipeline.
One such product is a natural antiviral that Baker says is particularly timely, given the rise of illnesses such as Avian flu that have brought the possibility of pandemic to light.
This product — which is currently in testing — led to a collaboration between Bioniche, Loyalist College (Belleville, ON) and the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON) that resulted in the installation of a CO2 supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) plant at Loyalist College.

SFE is a process that uses high pressure and low temperature to extract different components from raw materials, without altering the components. This results in highly concentrated extracts.
“It’s probably the most advanced little pilot plant in North America at this time,” Baker says. “We can do some really sophisticated technology to extract these components from plants.”
Another product area Bioniche Botanicals is working on is immune stimulation. The company has collaborated with the University of Guelph’s (Guelph, ON) Equine Research Centre on an echinacea product designed for horses that is sold in Canada, Asia, Australia and Europe.
The product has proven so successful that the company is now investigating a human version, which it expects to launch late this fall.

Freedom and Regulation
The focus on natural products, as well as background in animal health, traces back to the company’s founding, explains Jennifer Shea, manager of corporate communications and investor relations at Bioniche Life Sciences.
Bioniche Life Sciences started in 1979 as an animal health company, Shea says, with the intention of developing products that prevent and address animal illness without the use of antibiotics.

“The natural approach is part of the company’s history,” she says.
“And most of their products are natural products, whether they’re natural health products or pharma products, almost all of the products have a natural base,” Baker agrees. “So it’s not out of focus with the deep seeded philosophy of the company.”
Being paired with a biotechnology company has proved beneficial for Bioniche Botanicals, Baker says, because of the tough standards within which the company must work.
“The quality control that’s imposed upon these kinds of products in a biopharmaceutical company like Bioniche is enormous
. . . it’s almost stifling,” Baker says. “But at the same time, when you come out the other end from this internal rigour, you end up with some amazing products that the consumer can have so much confidence in.”

While Bioniche Life Sciences’ standards are tough when it comes to products, Baker says as an investigator and employee, he has quite a bit of flexibility.
“It’s a wonderful place to work,” he says. “Bioniche has been a wonderful place to let a person like me function. They’ve given me enough freedom to purse some of these things.”
Baker credits Bioniche founder, president and CEO Graeme McCrae, with this open atmosphere.
“There are days I’m sure he wonders, but there’s other days that I think it’s been a whale of a ride, and we’re having a lot of fun, and we’re going to have some great rewards out of this.”

The Hemp Guy
Baker may have earned this freedom because of his extensive background.
In addition to his role at Bioniche Botanicals, Baker is the founder and president of Stonehedge Phytomedicinals Ltd. (Stirling, ON), a company that focuses on hemp and natural products.
Though Baker says he was reluctant at first to get into the area of hemp research, it has proven to be a fruitful venture in the area of bioproducts.
“They had to drag me kicking and screaming into doing this work, because . . . well I’m an old Baptist boy, and I don’t go near it, I don’t smoke it, I don’t drink it, I don’t even dance with it,” Baker jokes.

Baker was asked by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) to act as an independent sampler and tester of industrial hemp fields across a region that stretches from Toronto to the Quebec border.
“OMAFRA was in a position where they needed help to get this work done, and they needed somebody independent to do it,” he says. “You had to have certain credentials, and I had all (of) those, so I reluctantly got involved.”
Baker was impressed that while hemp is not a native species to North America, the samples he tested, which had been in Ontario for several hundred years, were as or more productive than European varieties in producing biomass, and had as low or lower levels of the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol.

“All the bells and whistles were going off in my head that we’re looking at something with enormous potential,” Baker says.
Baker says hemp’s large biomass potential, as well as its ability to grow in any climate, make it an advantageous crop to work with.
“With forestry products, as you cut the forest down, it gets further and further away from a biorefinery,” Baker explains. “But (with) hemp, you can keep it growing right in close to the biorefinery.”

Hemp can be converted into chemicals that can be used as precursors for plastics or fuels, Baker explains. Its fibres can be used to reinforce plastic, and it is also currently being used in paper.
As with his work with Bioniche Botanicals, Baker says his work in hemp takes advantage of bioprospecting, local geography, and could one day reap significant rewards.
“(With) the price of crude oil, and its impact on things like plastics, if we had a biomass crop in Canada that could compete, it would be a tremendous boon for agriculture,” Baker says.
“This stuff is going to be, I think, the premier biomass crop for the bioeconomy.”